City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

99 PERCENT PERSPIRATION 69
region to make an encoder/decoder pair. Then they took photos of the scrambled
and unscrambled images, packed them up with the bundles, and sent
them to the CIA.
Hicks, feeling satisfied, took his first vacation in three years at American
Optical. As his body relaxed on the sand at Myrtle Beach, his mind began to
analyze the coding theory behind the image scrambler, and Hicks came to
an unpleasant realization. Using the same scrambler many times could ‘‘wear
out’’ the code, so someone who intercepted enough scrambled images could
decode them by comparing the patterns. ‘‘You wear it out in a hurry, too,’’
recalls Hicks, because the fixed fibers made each device scramble the picture
in exactly the same way each time it was used. He figured breaking the code
would take only 18 images scrambled by the same device and access to a
‘‘fairly large computer’’—by 1957 standards. 33 That meant image scramblers
could not offer the security the CIA wanted.
Most people try to avoid concluding their own work is futile, and very few
willingly reveal that unpleasant truth. Not Will Hicks. He wrote to the CIA,
explaining why image scramblers would not work and suggesting they instead
use one-shot keys, which are simpler but unbreakable. ‘‘The people I
was working with weren’t very knowledgeable about coding theory, and it
was news to them. It may have been to everybody at the CIA,’’ 34 Hicks says.
But he convinced them, and they canceled the project.
American Optical management was rather less pleased with Hicks’s insight
and considered firing him. However, cooler heads prevailed. He still had the
‘‘cover’’ project of the endoscope and was already working on another military
fiber-optic program. ‘‘I was sort of a pain in the ass when I was young,’’
Hicks says. ‘‘Maybe I am still.’’
The Odyssey of Narinder Kapany
Narinder Kapany was far from idle at the University of Rochester. He built
some devices, did some contract research, and spoke and wrote prolifically.
By 1957, when he moved to the Illinois Institute of Technology Research
Institute, he was the best-known spokesman for fiber optics. Self-confident
and secure in his Sikh traditions, the solidly built Kapany was a striking and
exotic figure in white-bread America. Nearly six feet tall, he was well dressed
in western suits but his turbaned head and bearded face stood out in a crowd.
Charming and articulate, he made the case for fiber optics with a voice carrying
hints of his years in India and England.
His energy, enthusiasm, and dash of flamboyance left a vivid impression.
While attending a faculty Halloween party in Rochester, he volunteered to
answer the door, knowing that to Americans he was already in costume. 35
He called sending an image through a knotted bundle of optical fibers his
‘‘Indian optical rope trick.’’ 36 He also wrote a series of sober, scholarly papers
in the Journal of the Optical Society of America 37 that outlined the basic principles
of fiber optics. As Curtiss discovered, Kapany’s papers were not infalli-