Harold Hopkins

British physicist (Imperial College, later Reading); the fibrescope (1954) and the rod-lens telescope

What the film says

Showed with Kapany in 1954 that an ordered fibre bundle could carry an image round a bend, then turned the telescope inside out with rods of glass.

Watch 46:57 in the film VIII. Light
British makers declined to build his rod lens; Karl Storz did.

Watch 47:42 in the film VIII. Light

Late 1940s (1948, per the Hopkins Society): Hopkins designs a zoom lens for the BBC, used for televising sport. probable timeline
1950: Hopkins publishes Wave Theory of Aberrations (Oxford University Press). timeline
1951: At a dinner party, the gastroenterologist Hugh Gainsborough's complaint about rigid gastroscopes prompts Hopkins to work on a flexible instrument. probable timeline
January 1954: Hopkins and Kapany publish their flexible fibrescope in Nature; van Heel publishes in the same issue. timeline
1961 (Hopkins Society) or 1956 (Wallace 1973): First public showing of rod-lens images: at the SIU meeting in Rio de Janeiro with Gow (1961), or to BAUS in Glasgow (1956, three years before the patent filing and probably an error). disputed timeline
16 July 1959: Hopkins files the British rod-lens patent application, GB 954,629. timeline
14 July 1960: The US rod-lens patent application is filed by W. Watson and Sons Ltd (US 3,257,902, granted 28 June 1966). timeline
8 April 1964: GB patent 954,629 is published. timeline
1967: The Hopkins-Storz rod-lens cystoscope with cold light is presented at the SIU congress in Munich. timeline