Invention of fiber optics technologies

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Fiber optic technology has been around for a long time and is fairly simple in concept, despite its widespread use in today's modern telecommunications networks. The basic idea behind fiber optic technology is to transmit data in the form of light waves that are then converted into electric signals at the receiving end.

Twine Connection Data Fiber Cord Cable Network.
credit: Pixabay, license: CC0 1.0

The need for this type of technology arose in the 1960s at AT&T's Bell Laboratories when they needed a way to surpass long-distance copper cable limitations. The limits revealed themselves when several phone lines were installed in smaller communities, located far away from each other, and these wires became overloaded due to limited capacity. It was clear that the only solution was to find a better way of transmitting data.

Optical Fiber concept. credit: Pixabay, license: Pixabay License

Fiber optics was invented by Dr. Daniel Colladon and Dr. Jacques Babinet in Paris in the 1850s, who had also experimented with light transmission through water pipes. Their research, however, was not successful because of purity of components and glass quality problems. In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell patented an optical telephone system that actually worked, but it used glass tubes as the transmission medium (like the one Dr. Colladon and Dr. Babinet had envisioned), which could not be stretched over long distances without losing signal integrity.

Inside of optical fiber cable credit: Wikimedia, license: CC BY-SA 3.0

The idea of using light to transmit data through glass tubes was revived in 1967 when Dr. Tadao Yoshida (and his team) created a new version of fiber optic that utilized flat glass strands. This was the breakthrough that led to today's technology.

TOSLINK optical fiber cable credit: Wikimedia, license: CC BY-SA 3.0

Current fiber optics technology is utilized in telecommunications, computer networking, and medical imaging fields. Fiber optic cables are made of thin strands of glass or plastic that transmit light through thin glass fibers. These fibers "guide" the light signal by keeping it in a straight line, much like how a pinhole camera works. The smaller a fiber optic strand is, the better its signal strength and resolution are. The limitations of optical fiber cabling lie only in cost, size (electromagnetic interference), attenuation, and bandwidth capability.
In Future Technologies for Communications and Measurements, FOTON is predicted to become the standard of optical cables and to have the capability to support a near-infinite amount of data. However, this kind of technology is still in its very beginning stages.