ABSTRACT
When I first heard of a seminar on the topic of fiber optics at Bell Telephone Laboratories I considered whether I should attend or not-after all one must try to do one’s own work and not spend all one’s time in lectures. First, I reflected optical frequencies were very much higher than the electrical ones in use at time, and hence the fiber optics would have much greater bandwidth-and bandwidth is the effective rate (bits per second) of transmission, and is the name of the game for the telephone company, my employers at the time. Second, I recalled Alexander Graham Bell had once sent a telephone conversation over a light beambut then he was a bit of a gadgeteer all his life. So it could be done, and had been done long ago. Third, I also knew about the internal reflections as you go from a higher index medium to a lower index mediumyou see it in still water when viewed from below where there are angles which totally reflect the light back down into the water, Figure 21.I. Hence I understood, in a fair way, what an optical fiber would be-they were a novel idea then. I certainly had enough experience in college labs with drawing glass into fibers to understand how easy it would be due to the effects of surface tension to make round fibers of a fairly uniform diameter, and to some extent the corresponding role of surface tension for liquid glass. Hence I took the time to go and learn about this promising new development.
