Demonstration of the new gastroscope, the “fiberscope”.

The Hirschowitz fiber optic endoscope, the "Fiberscope."  In February 1957 Hirschowitz passed the first prototype instrument down his own throat and, a few days later, down that of a patient. Hirschowitz gave the first report on the new much thinner, and much more flexible instrument at the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the Optical Society of America, October, 1956. His first very brief published report on the instrument was "A long fiberscope for internal medial examinations," J. Optical Soc. Am. I (1957), 117. This report was co-authored with the co-developers of the instrument, the physicist C. Wilber Peters (1918-89), who developed the glass-coated fiber with the optical qualities required for the fiber bundle of a gastroscope, and Peters's student Lawrence E. Curtiss. Hirschowtiz's 1958 paper cited here was his first report on the new instrument to the gastroenterology community.