LIGHT THAT BENDS (Apr, 1957)

LIGHT THAT BENDS
AN AMAZING new optical instrument now being developed at the Imperial College of Science at London, England, is the Fibrescope. When completed, this device will enable doctors to search inside the human body, physicists to watch radioactive material from the other side of lead walls and engineers to examine hidden parts of complicated machinery.

The Fibrescope consists of a bundle of glass fibres, each one several times finer than a human hair. Looking along the axis of the bundle, an image at the other end is clearly seen, no matter how many times the bundle has been knotted, twisted or bent around corners. The instrument is expected to substitute for many of the expensive existing optical systems whose complicated arrangement of lenses makes it difficult for them to be used where flexibility is required. Drs. H. H. Hopkins and Punjabi Narinder Singh Kapany are developing the Fibrescope.