Page 25 - Optical Switching And Networking Handbook

10 Chapter 1

Table 1-1 1840s Daniel Collodon and Jacques Babinet showed that light could be
guided along jets of water used for fountain displays.
Timeline for
Development of 1854 John Tyndall created interest in guided light by displaying light
guided by a jet of water flowing from a tank.
Fiber-Based
Systems 1900s Various inventors realized that bent quartz rods could carry light and
patented them as dental illuminators.
1920s John L. Baird and Clarence W. Hansell patented the idea of using
arrays of hollow pipes or transparent rods to transmit images for tele-
vision or facsimile systems.

1930s Heinrich Lamm demonstrated image transmission through a bundle of
optical fibers. He used his to look inside inaccessible parts of the body
in a medical application. He also documented that he could transmit
an image through a short bundle of fibers. However, the unclad fibers
transmitted the images poorly.

1940s Many doctors used illuminated Plexiglas tongue depressors.
1951 Holger Møller Hansen applied for a Danish patent on fiberoptic imag-
ing. The Danish patent office denied his application, based on Baird
and Hansell’s patents.
1954 Abraham van Heel, Harold H. Hopkins, and Narinder Kapanyin sepa-
rately announced imaging bundles. None of these people made bundles
that could carry light very far, but their reports popularized the
fiberoptics revolution. The primary innovation was made by van Heel.
Early use of fiber was with “bare glass,” with total internal reflection
at a glass-air interface. Van Heel covered a bare fiber with a transpar-
ent cladding with a lower refractive index.
1956 The next step was the development of glass-clad fibers by Lawrence
Curtiss while working part time on a project to develop an endoscope
to examine the inside of the stomach.
1960 Glass-clad fibers had attenuation of about 1 decibel per meter, which
worked well for medical imaging. This was much too high for use in
telecommunications.

1970 Maurer, Keck, and Schultz made the first optical fiber with data losses
low enough for wide use in telecommunications. It is now capable of
transmitting data 65,000 times faster than regular copper wire
methods.