Coherent optical-fibre bundle (fibrescope)
Haz coherente de fibras ópticas (fibroscopio)
- Date
- 1954 · confidence high
- Place
- London, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Harold Hopkins and Narinder Singh Kapany
- Field
- Communication
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A bundle of thousands of aligned glass fibres that carries an image from one end to the other, published in Nature in 1954. Kapany, born in Punjab, coined the term fibre optics in 1956.
Van Heel (Delft, 1954) published the use of cladding at the same time; Baird and Hansell patented fibre bundles in 1926-1927 without demonstrating them. Hopkins and Kapany obtained the first image.
What it led to
- flexible fibre endoscopes
- clad fibre for communications
- fibre lighting and sensors