City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

50 CITY OF LIGHT
Corning Glass Works. To see what would happen in a two-layer structure,
like the retina, he had coated them with a transparent layer of instrument
lacquer, which has a lower refractive index than glass. That was about all
he had done when van Heel arrived, but it was enough to get the idea.
Before they sat down to dinner, the two men agreed that each would
contact the other before publishing anything. 14 Each thought he had made
an important contribution. Van Heel had brought the ideas of image transmission
and scrambling in fiber bundles. O’Brien contributed the idea of cladding
the fibers.
Their discussion might have become the basis of a fruitful collaboration,
but transatlantic communications were limited at mid-century. In 1951, only
radio-telephones could carry voices across the Atlantic, and people had to
book channels in advance. Most people had to rely on the mails and an
occasional telegram. Busy men like O’Brien and van Heel could easily fall out
of touch, and they soon did.
An Independent Inventor
Brian O’Brien was not the only person thinking of applying a clear cladding
to guide light along transparent fibers in 1951. On April 11, Holger Møller
Hansen applied for a Danish patent on a ‘‘flexible picture transport cable.’’
Like Heinrich Lamm, Møller Hansen thought that a bundle of parallel glass
or plastic fibers would make a much more flexible gastroscope than rigid tubes
and lenses. Unlike Lamm, he was trained in engineering. That helped Møller
Hansen realize that bare fibers would not work well. He thought that circular
fibers would minimize points of contact where the light could leak out. His
application also showed he realized the importance of a cladding: ‘‘Eventually
the threads will be coated with a substance whose index of refraction approaches
one.’’ 15 In essence, Møller Hansen had come close to the same idea
that O’Brien suggested to van Heel six months later.
The Danish inventor had a background very different from the two eminent
professors of physics. The son of a machinist, Møller Hansen was born
in 1915 in Assens on the Danish island of Funen. He spent only five years
in school before starting work as a farmhand at 12. He apprenticed as an
electrician, then as a gardener, before joining the Danish army. There the
young man showed his bent for invention, improving a cryptographic machine
used to code secret messages. Code machines were important for a small
country bordering Nazi Germany, and the invention earned newspaper headlines
for the 23-year-old soldier. A rich mill owner saw the articles and paid
Møller Hansen’s way to engineering school in Copenhagen. It was a struggle
for a man with little formal education, but Møller Hansen takes pride in being
one of four from a class of 23 who finished the program. 16
The Danish subsidiary of Philips N. V. hired Møller Hansen to develop
telephone systems, and he continued tinkering in a small home workshop. In
late 1949, 17 the segmented eye of the fly 18 inspired him to consider using a