A Fiber-Optic Chronology(2)

This chronology is an early version of the one that appears in my book City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics, published by Oxford University Press as part of the Sloan Technology Series. It is available from your local bookseller, Oxford, or Amazon.com. Your questions and comments are welcome via e-mail. I have also posted a short narrative history

1892: Herman Hammesfahr shows glass dress at Chicago World's Fair

1895: Henry C. Saint-Rene designs a system of bent glass rods for guiding light in an early television scheme (Crezancy, France)

April 25, 1898: David D. Smith of Indianapolis applies for patent on bent glass rod as a surgical lamp

1920s: Bent glass rods used for microscope illumination

June 2, 1926: C. Francis Jenkins applies for U.S. patent on a mechanical television receiver in which light passes along quartz rods in a rotating drum to form an image.

Oct. 15, 1926: John Logie Baird applies for British patent on an array of parallel glass rods or hollow tubes to carry image in a mechanical television. He later built an array of hollow tubes.

December 30, 1926: Clarence W. Hansell outlines principles of the fiber-optic imaging bundle in his notebook at the RCA Rocky Point Laboratory on Long Island. RCA files for U.S. patent Aug. 13, 1927, and later files for British patent.

August 18, 2011

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