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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52 CITY OF LIGHT<br />
in 1925. He was a lively, cheerful man whose interests reached well beyond<br />
physics. He fell in love with the French language and literature while working<br />
in Paris, 25 knew Latin and Greek, and was fluent in English. He also became<br />
fascinated with optics.<br />
<strong>The</strong> study <strong>of</strong> optics was hardly fashionable in the 1920s, but van Heel was<br />
keenly aware <strong>of</strong> its deep roots in Holland. A Dutch spectacle-maker built the<br />
first telescope in the early seventeenth century, and a Dutch scientist formulated<br />
the laws <strong>of</strong> refraction. 26 Van Heel collected early books on optics; on<br />
one American trip, he made a point <strong>of</strong> visiting a Library <strong>of</strong> Congress exhibit<br />
that showed four early volumes on optics missing from his personal library. 27<br />
Bram van Heel was not a trailblazing superstar <strong>of</strong> science; you must dig<br />
deep to find his name today, although former students remember him fondly.<br />
His genius lay in the demanding fields <strong>of</strong> precision optical measurement and<br />
lens design. 28 He helped build the Dutch optical industry in the 1930s. After<br />
the war, he salvaged old mechanical telephone relays to build one <strong>of</strong> the<br />
world’s first computers, which he used for the complex calculations needed<br />
to design lenses. 29<br />
Dutch <strong>of</strong>ficials sought his help to rebuild the country’s war-shattered optical<br />
industry and to develop new military optical systems. Willem Brouwer,<br />
a Resistance fighter who had returned to school after the war, joined van<br />
Heel on the periscope project. In late 1949, they intially considered an array<br />
<strong>of</strong> thin reflective tubes, but soon decided transparent fibers with mirror coatings<br />
would be more efficient. 30 In January 1950, Brouwer fired arrows attached<br />
to drops <strong>of</strong> molten glass down a long hall, drawing their first glass<br />
fibers the same way Boys had done 60 years earlier. <strong>The</strong>y also made plastic<br />
fibers. Initially, none <strong>of</strong> them transmitted much light.<br />
Van Heel returned from America enthusiastic about transparent claddings.<br />
31 He and Brouwer first pulled plastic fibers through liquid beeswax, a<br />
material common in mid-century laboratories. It improved fiber transmission<br />
more than they expected. 32 Next they pulled bare fibers through liquid plastic,<br />
stringing them around the lab so the plastic could cure and painting them<br />
black to keep light from leaking between them.<br />
<strong>The</strong>y made imaging bundles by winding a single long fiber around and<br />
around a reel, and cementing the fibers together at one spot. Cutting the<br />
cemented area gave them a flexible bundle with fibers in matching positions<br />
at both ends. An image focused on one end appeared on the other end. By<br />
April 1952, they had sent images through bundles <strong>of</strong> about 400 fibers as<br />
long as 20 inches (half a meter). 33<br />
Progress was interrupted in early 1953 when Brouwer left for America.<br />
Young, impulsive, and without strong ties to Holland, Brouwer had applied<br />
to immigrate during a moment <strong>of</strong> frustration in 1950. When approval finally<br />
came in early 1953, it was good for only three months. Van Heel asked him<br />
to stay, but with Europe still recovering from the war, Brouwer saw more<br />
opportunity in America. On the other side <strong>of</strong> the Atlantic, he abandoned fiber<br />
optics to work on military reconnaissance cameras, and the aerial sextant for<br />
the U2 spy plane.