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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99 PERCENT PERSPIRATION 65<br />
turned to South Carolina in 1950. When the CIA contacted him in 1954 he<br />
was restless, unhappy with the conservative South, and fighting with the state<br />
over taxes.<br />
Hicks arrived at American Optical in September 1954. <strong>The</strong> first day,<br />
O’Brien briefed him on fiber optics and gave him a couple <strong>of</strong> plastic-clad fibers<br />
O’Brien had made in Rochester. O’Brien told Hicks that his assignment was<br />
to make and clad fibers and assemble them into an image scrambler. <strong>The</strong><br />
busy O’Brien then sent Hicks <strong>of</strong>f to work in a building separate from the main<br />
research lab and had little more to do with the project.<br />
In theory, Hicks reported to associate research director Steve MacNeille<br />
and later to Walt Siegmund, a protégé <strong>of</strong> O’Brien’s from Rochester. In practice,<br />
he was largely on his own while everyone else concentrated on Todd-<br />
AO, an arrangement well matched to his independent nature. Not one to<br />
merely follow the boss’s lead, Hicks began by convincing himself that lowindex<br />
claddings were essential before the Michigan group reached the same<br />
conclusion. <strong>The</strong>n he tackled scrambler development, a job much tougher than<br />
merely demonstrating a crude imaging bundle because it essentially required<br />
a whole new technology.<br />
<strong>The</strong> security-conscious CIA used gastroscopes as a ‘‘cover’’ project to conceal<br />
work on image scramblers. At a simple level, the two applications share<br />
the need for fiber bundles that transmit intact images from end to end. To<br />
make an encoder, you scramble the loose fibers in the middle, glue the mixed<br />
region solid, then saw through it.<br />
Look closely, however, and you find quite different requirements. A gastroscope<br />
must be long, thin, and flexible to examine the stomach. A scrambler<br />
should be at least a couple <strong>of</strong> inches across to encode pictures or signatures,<br />
and short, fat, and rigid to handle easily. <strong>The</strong>se differences are crucial and<br />
lead to quite different devices. Whatever American Optical thought about the<br />
potential <strong>of</strong> medical instruments, their customer was the CIA, and the spy<br />
agency wanted image scramblers. Although both applications required fibers,<br />
the overall goals were different, ultimately leading Hicks and American Optical<br />
along a path different from the Michigan team.<br />
Hicks first tried drawing fiber from a hole in the bottom <strong>of</strong> a platinum<br />
crucible full <strong>of</strong> molten glass and then coating it with plastic. 17 <strong>The</strong> process<br />
was quick and fairly easy, but plastic-clad fibers did not transmit light well.<br />
When several months <strong>of</strong> refinements did not solve the problem, Hicks started<br />
work on glass cladding, without completely abandoning plastic. 18 His first idea<br />
was a logical extension <strong>of</strong> drawing fibers from a single crucible. He nested<br />
two crucibles together, melting low-index glass in the outer one and a highindex<br />
glass in the inner one. <strong>The</strong>n he pulled fibers through concentric holes<br />
at the bottoms <strong>of</strong> the crucibles, so glass in the outer crucible formed a cladding<br />
around a core <strong>of</strong> glass from the inner crucible. 19 <strong>The</strong> technique worked but<br />
did not yield good fibers.<br />
Hicks took a break in October to attend the Lake Placid meeting. He<br />
met Peters and Curtiss and was impressed by the progress they were making<br />
on a minimal budget. <strong>The</strong>ir discussions led Hicks to visit Ann Arbor