[CAnet - news] Optical fiber celebrates 40th anniversary

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[Some excerpts from Fibers.org article. --BSA]

http://fibers.org/articles/news/8/2/9/1

2006 marks the 40th anniversary of Kao and Hockham's breakthough paper on
fiber optic communication. Optics.org talks with Philip Hargrave of Nortel
about how fiber won over the skeptics.

Forty years ago, the concept of transmitting data on light signals through
glass was considered madness by many, including the media. However, given
the limited capacity of ordinary copper to carry phone calls, engineers at
Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) in Harlow, UK, were committed
to come up with an alternative technology.

Out of all the options, Charles Kao and George Hockham working at STL were
the first to realize that the idea of sending light down thin bits of glass
a few microns across was the most attractive idea. The duo's landmark paper,
"Dielectric-fiber surface waveguides for optical frequencies", was published
by the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1966 and gave the green light
to the concept of optical fiber communication.

At that time, the attenuation of light in glass stood at more than 1000
dB/km, which meant that light would travel just 3 m or so before halving in
intensity. However, Kao, Hockham and their colleagues remained confident
that if the magic figure of 20 dB/km could be met then fiber optic
communications would take-off commercially.

Motivated by the news, Corning found a way of making ultrapure glass within
just a few years of the announcement. "By 1973, the team at Harlow built a
rig over 2 km with a loss of 25 dB/km - not quite down to that magic figure,
but not far off," said Hargrave. 

By 1980 the loss came down even further and firms were experimenting with
putting cables under the sea. The first one to Belgium was installed in the
early 1980s. 

Cost remains a pertinent topic today, with fiber-to-the-home looming large
on the horizon. In this case, the barrier is proving to be not the price of
optical components, but the expense of ducting, installation and civil
engineering. "The challenge is getting that infrastructure investment and
only accepting a return over a very long timescale for the civil engineering
part, while trying to get a reasonable return over more realistic technology
timescales for what goes down the pipe," concluded Hargrave.


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