Most people agree that Fiber Optics were first demonstrated in 1870 by John Tyndall. To do this he simply took 2 buckets of water, placed a hole in one, and while the water flowed from one to another, he also showed that light flowed within the water. So the light from one bucket appeared to light the water in the second. Simple!
From such humble (and wet) beginnings, other scientists helped to bring the notion of guided light (fiber optics) to the forefront of scientific research. In 1880 William Wheeling patented something called "mirrored light". He took a single light source and projected it through a mirrored tube. He showed that light could be branched of the original tube with additional tubing, taking light to another area, or another room, in the same way that water is piped around a home. He might have been better know today if he could have improved on an ineffective design, and if a certain Thomas Edison hadn't come up with the notion of an incandescent light bulb.
At around the same time, Alexander Graham Bell invented his "photophone" cleverly using reflected sunlight on a diaphragm attached within the mouthpiece. Two hundred meters away at the other end, the various intensities of light where converted by an electric receiver back into speech. Bell, way ahead of his time, believed that this method of speech transfer was greatly superior the less flexible wired telephone. He would later be proved right!
The term "fiber optics" was first used in 1956 by Narinder Kapany from the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. Both Kapany and Brian O'Brien at the American Optical Company, concurrently developed the fiberscope, a huge leap forward in fiber optics. Up until then, the biggest problem had been the loss of signal due to light leakage. By taking an inner core of class, shielded with an outer cladding also of glass, this loss was dramatically reduced. This new fiberscope quickly found use in industrial inspection and medial instruments, ultimately enabling modern laparoscopic surgery.
The next leap forward was in 1957 when Gordon Gould discussed the use of lasers to generate a high energy, highly focused source of light. Although going through several development stages, by 1962 the Semiconductor laser would become a standard still in use today.
1792 - The first practical optical telecommunication system - Claude Chappe's semaphore system
French inventor Claude Chappe demonstrated a practical semaphore system that eventually spanned all of France. His system was a series of semaphores mounted on towers, where human operators relayed messages from one tower to the next. It beat hand-carried messages hands down.
1854 - Total internal reflection - the technology foundation for fiber optic communication
One theory slowly took root which would ultimately solve the problem of optical communication. This phenomenon was named total internal reflection.
British physicist John Tyndall demonstrated total internal reflection by guiding light in a jet of water flowing from a tank. In the 1890s, inventors realized that bent quartz rods could carry light, and patented them as dental illuminators.
1880 - Alexander Graham Bell's optical telephone system
Alexander Graham Bell patented an optical telephone system, which he called the Photophone. He dreamed of sending signals through the air, but the atmosphere didn't transmit light as reliably as wires carried electricity.
1920 - The patent of using arrays of hollow pipes or transparent rods to transmit images
During the 1920s, John Logie Baird in England and Clarence W. Hansell in the United States patented the idea of using arrays of hollow pipes or transparent rods to transmit images for television or facsimile systems.
1930 - Heinrich Lamm demonstrated image transmission through a bundle of optical fibers
Munich's medical student Heinrich Lamm was the first person to have demonstrated image transmission through a bundle of optical fibers. In a 1930 paper, he reported transmitting the image of a light bulb filament through a short bundle.
1954 - Van Heel invented fiber cladding
All earlier fibers developed were bare and lacked any form of cladding, with total internal reflection occurring at a glass-air interface.
Dutch scientist Van Heel made the crucial innovation of cladding fiber-optic cables. He covered a bare fiber or glass or plastic with a transparent cladding of lower refractive index. This protected the total reflection surface from contamination and greatly reduced cross talk between fibers.
1960 - The invention of laser
The July 22, 1960 issue of Electronics magazine introduced its report on Theodore Maiman's demonstration of the first laser.
1964 - The critical and theoretical specification of optical fiber identified by Dr. Charles K. Kao
After a long, hard look at fiber attenuation, Dr. Kao concluded that the high losses of early fibers were due to impurities, not to silica glass itself. He forecasted that fiber loss could be reduced below 20 dB/km for long-range communication devices. Dr. Kao also illustrated the need for a purer form of glass to help reduce light loss.
1970 - Corning Glass's invention of low loss single mode fiber
Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz at Corning Glass announced they had made single-mode fibers with attenuation at the 633-nanometer helium-neon line below 20 dB/km.
1977 - The first live traffic fiber optic system
General Telephone and Electronics tested and deployed the world's first live telephone traffic through a fiber-optic system running at 6 Mbps.
Soon in May 1977, Bell Lab deployed an optical telephone communication system in the downtown Chicago area, covering a distance of 1.5 miles.
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