City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

70 CITY OF LIGHT
ble—among other things, he was slow to realize the need for a cladding—
but they were the best introduction to a promising new field.
In fact, they were the only readily available introduction because nobody
else wrote much. O’Brien was too busy with new ideas. 38 H. H. Hopkins and
van Heel abandoned fiber optics soon after their early papers. Hicks wrote
little but patent applications, and much of his early military work was classified
until the late 1960s. 39 Curtiss found himself in a bitter patent battle
that lasted until 1971, and his lawyers discouraged him from writing about
technical details. 40 Hirschowitz wrote about building and using medical instruments,
not about fiber properties.
From 1955 to 1965, Kapany was the lead author on 46 scientific papers
and coauthor of 10 more—an average of over five a year. That represented
a staggering 30 percent of all the papers published on fiber optics during
those years, including reports on medical treatment. 41 It was Kapany who
wrote a 1960 Scientific American cover story on fiber optics, 42 and the first
book on fiber optics, 43 based partly on his earlier papers. 44
Kapany’s writings spread the gospel of fiber optics, a highly visible role
that cast him as a pioneer in the field. However, his technical innovations
are widely regarded as less crucial than those of men like Curtiss and Hicks.
Through 1969, he collected a respectable 10 fiber patents, but Hicks earned
22. 45 His greatest gift may have been for promotion, though he dislikes the
word. ‘‘I was just doing what came naturally, which is to go and get the
resources to work on the crazy ideas I come up with, and talk about it in
conferences and publish.’’ 46
Finding a Market for Gastroscopes
By the spring of 1957, Hirschowitz, Peters, and Curtiss had a working gastroscope
and patent applications in the works. Hirschowitz, the salesman of
the group, went hunting a company to make commercial instruments. American
Optical turned him down because the instrument division didn’t think
they could sell enough endoscopes. 47 American Cystoscope Makers Inc. eventually
licensed the technology on the condition that the Michigan group help
them start production. As the expert fiber maker, Curtiss found himself shuttling
back and forth to New York to lecture American Cystoscope production
engineers while still an undergraduate. 48
Building machinery for industrial production was far more difficult than
jury-rigging equipment at the university. American Cystoscope could not borrow
glass samples and wind fibers on oatmeal boxes. To mass-produce bundles
reliably, they had to buy special machinery, find reliable sources of the right
kind of glass, and assure quality of their product. 49 That took time. Curtiss
got into graduate school at Harvard, then took off a semester to help start
production. The interruption became a career, and he never returned to
Harvard. 50