Fiber Optics Change, Speed Up World’s Flow of Information
More than any other technology, fiber optics has brought about the phenomenal increase in the flow of information around the globe.
Gossamer strands of ultra-pure glass delivering voice, video and computer data at laser-pulse speed have replaced copper as the backbone of America’s telephone and cable television networks.
They are spurring the rapid growth of the Internet, the rush of facsimiles and the emergence of teleconferencing and high-definition TV. And within 10 years, this dazzling conduit to communications’ most distant frontiers could be hooked up to individual homes.
“People are saying finally that the change from the Industrial Revolution to the Information Revolution is happening, and fiber optics is driving it,” said Govind P. Agrawal, a professor of optics at the University of Rochester.
Finding a practical way to transmit messages using light instead of electricity--a puzzle that Alexander Graham Bell began unraveling in 1880--came about in a solitary setting at Corning Glass Works in August 1970.
It was late on a Friday, after the laboratory had emptied, and scientist Donald Keck tried shining a laser beam through yet one more sample of glass drawn into a hair-thin fiber 200 meters long.
Bending over a microscope, he slowly began to align the helium neon laser with the fiber’s infinitesimal core. All of a sudden, the pinpoint light hit him square in the eye. It had raced all the way along the glass, bounced off the far end and sailed right back.
On every previous attempt stretching back two long years, the signal-carrying light pulses had quickly dissipated.
“In that moment was truly the thrill of discovery,” said Keck, still chuckling at the memory.
Optical fiber communications at last seemed within reach. The other key equation, room temperature laser, was developed just three months later by Bell Telephone Laboratories.
Although it took Corning another 12 stubborn years to land its first big order, fiber optics is now its largest and fastest-growing business.
The Fortune 500 materials company, renamed Corning Inc. in 1989, churns out more than 5 million miles of optical fiber each year, capturing by far the biggest chunk of the global market.
As with many innovations, fiber optics is finding unintended uses, from zapping tumors and gallstones to betraying the intruder vibrating the tiny sensor painted to the wall.
And leave it to scientists to dream up magical spinoffs--detecting minute defects in bridges, guiding cars along the interstate, performing surgery-by-phone to remote regions (with help from robotics, perhaps).
Already, more than 60 million miles of fiber have been installed worldwide. That much alone can handle more information than all the billions of miles of copper laid down over the last century.
Where a digital copper cable relays as many as 24 simultaneous telephone conversations, or 64,000 bits of information per second, a single optical fiber of the newest variety can handle at least 200,000 phone conversations--or upward of 10 billion bits a second.
Next to fiber optics, even microwave-satellite transmission pales by comparison.
In fact, what was once the Holy Grail--a terabit pulsing a trillion bits per second--was arrived at in the laboratory this year. For a fiber to handle 20 million phone calls all at once, the data is relayed along dozens of wavelengths that don’t interfere with each other.
The technology has advanced at hyper-speed, impelled by the deregulation of the U.S. telecommunications industry in 1982.
First came the battles between AT&T; Corp. and newcomers like MCI and Sprint to lay down national fiber grids. That spawned regional networks. The next step will be bringing fiber all the way into the home.
The cost is still considered too high. One cable TV operator guessed roughly $2,000 a customer. But by splitting signals along wavelengths, the price will inevitably be split, too, and some think the fiber-optic home is just five to 10 years away.
What would people do with all that information capacity? For a start, they could begin downloading “lots of images and video on the Internet,” a task that requires enormous capacity, said Joe Campbell, a professor of electrical and computer engineering with the University of Texas at Austin.
“If you give people video on demand and they can watch a movie, they’re going to want to be able to watch three different movies at the same time. And maybe they would like it in high-definition TV. Then they’re going to want home video shopping. The list just goes on and on.
“People, I think, just always want more features and more functions.”
Besides huge capacity, optical fiber delivered clarity. Immune to electrical interference, the new technology forced out analog in favor of digital transmission--converting signals into precise ones and zeros.
“Making a phone call to Europe 10 years ago, you could barely hear the party at the other end,” said consultant John N. Kessler. “Today you call virtually anywhere and it’s as if you’re talking to someone around the corner.”
Kessler, president of KMI Corp. of Newport, R.I., which analyzes the 1,000 or so companies in fiber optics, said Corning and AT&T; spinoff Lucent Technologies control 80% to 90% of the U.S. fiber manufacturing market.
Corning commands 32% worldwide, more than twice as much as Lucent, its nearest rival, and its 1995 production of 5.2 million miles of fiber has swelled this year, Kessler said.
The fiber is made from fused silica, highly refined glass invented by Corning. By heating it up to as high as 2,000 degrees Celsius to remove impurities, researchers eventually devised a glass so clear that, if it replaced sea water, the ocean bed would be visible from the surface.
Keck was the only one at Corning to witness the light-channeling breakthrough. He rushed out into the hall and caught his research chief at the elevator.
“I said, ‘Hey, you want to see something neat!’ ” Keck recalled.
Scribbling his data in a lab notebook before floating home for the weekend, Keck added one more word:
“Whoopee!”
