City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
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44 CITY OF LIGHT<br />
He hurried to the German patent <strong>of</strong>fice, where he was astounded to learn<br />
that a British version <strong>of</strong> Hansell’s patent had just issued. 36 <strong>The</strong> disappointed<br />
Lamm wrote to the British licensee, the Marconi Company, who told him<br />
neither they nor Hansell ‘‘have tried to utilize this principle.’’ 37<br />
Most students in his position would have given up, but not Heinrich<br />
Lamm. He wrote a paper, which the journal Zeitschrift fur Instrumentenkunde<br />
published in its October 1930 issue. It appears under Lamm’s name alone,<br />
unusual at a time when European pr<strong>of</strong>essors typically insisted they share<br />
credit for student work. Indeed, Schindler thought Lamm’s experiment had<br />
failed. 38<br />
Lamm insisted ‘‘the experimental pro<strong>of</strong> <strong>of</strong> the possibility to transmit images<br />
through a flexible multi-fiber conductor <strong>of</strong> radiant energy ...justifies this<br />
communication.’’ However, he knew he could go no further by himself, concluding:<br />
‘‘I also hope that some optical firm possessed <strong>of</strong> more means, sources<br />
<strong>of</strong> supply, and experience than I have, could be induced by this report to build<br />
a serviceable flexible gastroscope.’’ 39<br />
Two Decades <strong>of</strong> Stillness<br />
Lamm’s hopes were in vain. His paper and Hansell’s patent sank without a<br />
trace. Crucial pieces <strong>of</strong> the technological puzzle were still missing. Only a<br />
feeble, fractured image had emerged from Lamm’s bundle. His glass fibers,<br />
like Jenkins’s quartz rods, absorbed too much light, and although no one<br />
realized it at the time, they didn’t confine light well either. Other technologies<br />
seemed far more practical for looking inside the body, for television, and even<br />
for displaying meter readings in more convenient locations.<br />
<strong>The</strong> rise <strong>of</strong> Adolf Hitler brought trouble for Lamm, a Jew. 40 Survival became<br />
more important than following up an old experiment. He and his physician<br />
wife fled Germany after their residencies at the Jewish Hospital in Breslau<br />
(now Wroclaw, Poland). <strong>The</strong>y reached America in 1937, where an uncle got<br />
Heinrich a job at a psychiatric hospital in Kansas <strong>City</strong>. 41 <strong>The</strong> next year, Lamm<br />
traveled through Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma with a salesman friend,<br />
seeking an exotic place to settle down as a surgeon. He found it in a town <strong>of</strong><br />
1500 in the southern tip <strong>of</strong> Texas, where the old town physician was retiring.<br />
<strong>The</strong> town lacked a Jewish community, but the native prejudices didn’t include<br />
antisemitism. 42 It was a welcome relief from Germany.<br />
Lamm tinkered a bit, and his restless mind explored many areas, but<br />
mostly he practiced medicine. He was an early and enthusiastic crusader for<br />
automobile seat belts. 43 He put on weight and his wavy hair thinned, but he<br />
retained his intelligence and passions, and kept a reprint <strong>of</strong> his paper from<br />
Zeitschrift fur Instrumentenkunde.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Radio Corporation <strong>of</strong> America had the resources Lamm lacked, but<br />
the company filed Hansell’s patent and forgot it. No company can do everything.<br />
Broadcast radio was a tremendous success; television was promising<br />
but costly to develop. <strong>Fiber</strong> optics was but a footnote to the work at Rocky