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 67<br />
bottom. Curtiss built a system that measured fiber diameter as it was drawn,<br />
without touching the glass. <strong>The</strong>y controlled the rate <strong>of</strong> fiber drawing by hand,<br />
averaging about five miles (eight kilometers) an hour. Like Hopkins and Kapany,<br />
they made bundles with ends aligned in the same position by looping<br />
the fibers, fixing one part <strong>of</strong> the loop in place, and then cutting carefully<br />
through the fixed spot. <strong>The</strong>y needed 25 miles (40 kilometers) <strong>of</strong> good fiber to<br />
make a single bundle <strong>of</strong> 40,000 fibers. 22 <strong>The</strong> freshly drawn fibers were only<br />
about 0.04 millimeter thick, so thin that plastic had to be coated on top <strong>of</strong><br />
their glass cladding before they could be handled. Hirschowitz and Peters paid<br />
the physics shop $800 to $900 to build a machine to wind fiber <strong>of</strong>f the<br />
oatmeal boxes into bundles, but almost everything else was homemade.<br />
Unlike O’Brien, Hirschowitz wasted no time filing for patents; his first application,<br />
covering the gastroscope, was filed December 28, 1956, with rights<br />
shared with Peters and Curtiss. 23 Curtiss applied for a patent on glass-clad<br />
fibers on May 6, 1957, assigning part interests to Hirschowitz and Peters. 24<br />
<strong>The</strong> glass-clad fiber was the last piece needed to build a gastroscope. Hirschowitz<br />
knew exactly what he wanted, and it took the three men just two<br />
months to assemble the first working model. <strong>The</strong> tip that went inside the<br />
stomach included a little illuminating lamp and optics to collect and focus<br />
light onto the end <strong>of</strong> the bundle in the stomach. Hirschowitz himself swallowed<br />
it first. 25 A few days later, February 18, 1957, he tested it on his first<br />
patient, a small woman who had an ulcer. <strong>The</strong> instrument went down successfully,<br />
and the moment seemed triumphant—until Marvin Pollard arrived.<br />
Academia has its pecking orders, and Marvin Pollard had thought he was<br />
at the top. He had not been deeply involved in development; Curtiss hadn’t<br />
realized he was involved at all until Pollard invited him to a reception. However,<br />
as the senior researcher, Pollard wanted to try the new instrument first.<br />
Furious that Hirschowitz hadn’t waited for him, he confiscated the new endoscope<br />
and locked it in his safe, so no one else could use it. 26 Tensions<br />
between Pollard and Hirschowitz escalated rapidly when Pollard demanded a<br />
share <strong>of</strong> patent rights. 27 He never got them, but he later blocked Hirschowitz<br />
from getting a permanent job at Michigan. 28<br />
Curtiss, who had thought the project was over, had to make a second<br />
gastroscope 5/16 inch (0.8 centimeter) thick and a meter long for Hirschowitz<br />
to show at a meeting <strong>of</strong> the American Gastroscopic Society in Colorado<br />
Springs. 29 A May snowstorm disrupted transportation, so fewer than 40 people<br />
attended his 10-minute talk, but those who attended were impressed.<br />
Kapany was there and claimed Bausch and Lomb had almost completed an<br />
instrument, but it never appeared. 30 Rudolf Schindler, by then a grand old<br />
man <strong>of</strong> gastroscopy, recalled that Heinrich Lamm had the same idea but<br />
thought Lamm had failed to assemble a bundle <strong>of</strong> fibers. 31 A few people asked<br />
for a demonstration, so Hirschowitz took them to the nearest phone booth<br />
and showed them fine print in the telephone directory.<br />
<strong>The</strong> whole project cost about $5500 over two years, nearly $4000 <strong>of</strong><br />
which went to pay Curtiss. American Optical, the CIA, and Bausch & Lomb<br />
probably spent far more.