Apparatus for the integral optical examination of mechanical stresses in the bottom of a transparent container, which comprises, in successive order a light source for emitting a light beam having a diameter and an angular divergence, means for polarizing said light light beam, a modulator for modulating the pulse frequency of said light beam, means for optically expanding the diameter of said light beam and for reducing the angular divergence thereof, means for sampling a substantially uniform intensity of the cross section of said light beam, means for substantially uniformly illuminating the bottom of said transparent container without illuminating side walls of said container, means for collecting the light beam, analyzer polarizing means for filtering out that part of the light beam having a plane of polarization perpendicular to the plane of polarization of said analyzer polarizing means, a photodetector for converting into an electrical signal the light beam passed by said analyzer polarizing means, means for substantially filtering out the effect of ambient light from said electrical signal, and means for correlating the strength of said signal to stresses in the bottom of said transparent object.