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THE HISTORY OF FIBER OPTICS
The French Chappe brothers invented the first “optical telegraph” in the 1790’s. It was a system compromised of a series of lights mounted on towers where operators would relay a message from one tower to the next. Over the course of the next century great strides were made in optical science. Throughout the 1800’s experiments marketed the first research into the guided transmission of light. Furthermore, Alexander Graham Bell developed an optical voice transmission system or optical telephone system he called the photophone in 1880. As one spoke into the photophone, the illuminated diaphragm vibrated, sending various intensities of light onto the selenium resistor. This allowed the sound to travel through light and then convert back into speech at the other end.
The 20th century is really were fiber optic technology experienced a phenomenal rate of progress. The laser was introduced in 1958 as an efficient source of light. The concept was introduced by Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow to show that masers could be made to operate in optical and infrared regions. Basically, light is reflected back and forth in an energized medium to generate amplified light as opposed to excited molecules of gas amplified to generate radio waves, as is the case with the maser. Laser stands for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation."
The early work on fiber optic light source and detector was slow and often had to borrow technology developed for other reasons. For example, the first fiber optic light sources were derived from visible indicator LEDs. As demand grew, light sources were developed for fiber optics that offered higher switching speed, more appropriate wavelengths, and higher output power.
TPC-5 was the first all-optic fiber cable that uses optical amplifiers and was laid across the Pacific Ocean in 1996. The following year the Fiber Optic Link Around the Globe (FLAG) became the longest single-cable network in the world and provided the infrastructure for the next generation of Internet applications. Today there are various industries that that use fiber optic technology within many different applications.
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