Business Solutions for Summer 2019

6 SUMMER 2019 Travel Back Through Fiber-Optic History It took many years, many scientists, and many dollars to develop the technology that resulted in today’s fiber optics. Here are the milestones: We’re shining the light on key discoveries and achievements • 1840s: Swiss physicist Daniel Colladon discovered he could shine light along a water pipe. The water carried the light by internal reflection. • 1870: An Irish physicist named John Tyndall demonstrated internal reflection at London's Royal Society. He shone light into a jug of water. When he poured some of the water out from the jug, the light curved round following the water's path. This idea of "bending light" is exactly what happens in fiber optics. Although Colladon is the true grandfather of fiber optics, Tyndall often earns the credit. • 1930s: Heinrich Lamm and Walter Gerlach, two German students, tried to use light pipes to make a gastroscope—an instrument for looking inside someone's stomach. • 1950s: In England, Indian physicist Narinder Kapany and Brit- ish physicist Harold Hopkins managed to send a simple picture down a light pipe made from thousands of glass fibers. After pub- lishing many scientific papers, Kapany earned a reputation as the "father of fiber optics." • 1957: Three American scientists at the University of Michigan —Lawrence Curtiss, Basil Hirschowitz, and Wilbur Peters— successfully used fiber-optic technology to make the world's first gastroscope. • 1960s: Chinese-born U.S. physicist Charles Kao and his col- league George Hockham realized that impure glass was no use for long-range fiber optics. Kao suggested that a fiber-optic cable made from very pure glass would be able to carry telephone sig- nals over much longer distances and was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for this groundbreaking discovery. Also during this decade, researchers at the Corning Glass Company made the first fiber-optic cable capable of carrying telephone signals. • Circa 1970: Donald Keck and colleagues at Corning found ways to send signals much further (with less loss) prompting the development of the first low-loss optical fibers. • 1977: The first fiber-optic telephone cable was laid between Long Beach and Artesia, California. • 1988: The first transatlantic fiber-optic telephone cable, TAT8, was laid between the United States, France, and the UK. • 2018: TeleGeography, a telecommunications market research and consulting firm, reports there are around 450 fiber-optic submarine cables (carrying communications under the world's oceans), stretching a total of 1.2 million km (0.7 million miles). We’re currently connecting our customers to the world with a FiberFast network constructed of fiber- optic cables. Call Panora Telco at (641) 755-2424 or Guthrie Center Communications at (641) 332-2000 for details on FiberFast services. Source: www.explainthatstuff.com/fiberoptics.html