Delight Your Friends With These Fiber Optics Stories

By John Oncea, Editor

Fiber optics began as a concept nearly 200 years ago. Today, it is a technology used by nearly every industry including communications, healthcare, aerospace, and more.

Fiber optics – the transmission of data, voice, and images by the passage of light through thin, transparent fibers – are used in a wide range of applications today. In telecommunications, they are used to provide high-speed internet, telephone, and television services.

Healthcare uses fiber optics in endoscopy and other medical imaging techniques while military and aerospace depend on them for secure and high-speed communication links. They are used as sensors for measuring temperature, pressure, and other parameters by industry and to transfer information at high speed between servers and storage systems in data centers.

The future of fiber optics looks promising with researchers exploring new materials and techniques to reduce signal loss further and increase optical fibers’ data-carrying capacity. Emerging technologies such as quantum communication and integrating fiber optics with 5G networks are expected to drive further growth and innovation in this field. We’ll take a look at the future of fiber optics in this article, but first, let’s take a look at its 180-year history.

The History Of Fiber Optics

Early theoretical foundations of fiber optics can be traced to the 1840s when the concept of guiding light by refraction was first demonstrated by Daniel Colladon and Jacques Babinet in Paris, writes TestGuy. They showed that light could be directed along jets of water, which helped to lay the groundwork for the development of optical fibers.

In 1854, according to Thought Co, John Tyndall showed light could be conducted through a curved stream of water, proving that a light signal could be bent. Twenty-six years later, Alexander Graham Bell invented the photophone which transmitted a voice signal on a beam of light. “Bell focused sunlight with a mirror and then talked into a mechanism that vibrated the mirror. At the receiving end, a detector picked up the vibrating beam and decoded it back into a voice the same way a phone did with electrical signals.”

In 1888, the medical team of Roth and Reuss of Vienna used bent glass rods to illuminate body cavities, writes Optica Solutions Australia. Seven years later, French engineer Henry Saint-Rene designed a system of bent glass rods to guide light images in an early attempt at television.

Clarence Hansell and other scientists patented various methods for using light to transmit images during the 1920s and ‘30s, paving the way for fiber optic imaging. Then, in 1953, Dutch physicist Bram van Heel demonstrated the use of cladding in optical fibers, which significantly reduced the loss of light during transmission, according to SK-TEL. This was a critical advancement, as it improved the efficiency and practicality of fiber optics.

In 1954, Narinder Kapany and Harold Hopkins separately demonstrated the ability to transmit images through bundles of optical fibers, laying the groundwork for fiber optics. The invention of the laser by Theodore Maiman six years later provided a coherent light source that was crucial for optical communications and, in 1961, Elias Snitzer and Will Hicks of American Optical demonstrated transmitting a laser beam through a thin glass fiber.

According to Race Communications, Manfred Borner invented the first fiber optic data transmission network in 1965. That same year, “Charles K. Kao and George A. Hockham proposed that fiber optics could become a practical communication method over long distances. This discovery later earned Kao the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2009.”

The 1970s saw fiber optics revolutionize the telecommunications industry, playing a major role in the advent of the Information Age. The revolution began when Corning Glass researchers Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz invented fiber optic wire or “Optical Waveguide Fibers” (patent #3,711,262) capable of carrying 65,000 times more information than copper wire in 1970.

In 1972, they fabricated the first low-loss optical fiber with a loss of 16 dB/km, using titanium-doped silica glass and, five years later, the first live telephone traffic was transmitted through fiber optic cables in Chicago (AT&T), Long Beach (GTE), and the U.K. (British Post Office), marking the beginning of field trials for fiber optic communications.

The 1980s saw advances in semiconductor lasers and detectors improve the performance of fiber optic systems, along with the introduction of single-mode fibers which further reduced signal loss and increased transmission distance and bandwidth. Major telecom companies like AT&T, British Telecom, and MCI started deploying nationwide fiber optic networks for long-haul communications and fiber optics began replacing communications satellites and copper cables in various applications.

As the use of fiber optics grew, standards for the technology emerged with the Electronics Industry Association (EIA) and later the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) playing key roles. In 1983, the first Ethernet standard for fiber optics was published, enabling the use of fiber in local area networks (LANs). The first transatlantic fiber optic cable (TAT-8) was installed in 1988, capable of carrying 40,000 telephone calls simultaneously.

The 2000s saw the advent of Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) which allowed multiple signals to be transmitted simultaneously on different wavelengths, increasing the capacity of fiber optic networks. Fiber to the Home (FTTH) technology began to spread in the 2010s, providing high-speed internet access directly to consumers’ residences. The demand for higher bandwidth and faster internet speeds drove continued investment and innovation in fiber optic technology.

Four Fiber Optics Stories That Will Dazzle Your Friends With

According to Research And Markets, the global fiber optics market will experience remarkable growth, reaching $68.28 billion by 2030, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 11.69%.

The projected growth is expected to be driven by factors such as:

1. Increasing Demand for High-Speed Internet: The proliferation of digital services, including streaming, online gaming, and cloud computing, is driving the need for faster and more reliable internet connections. Fiber optic technology offers the bandwidth and speed necessary to support these activities.
2. Telecommunications Industry Growth: The continuous expansion of the telecommunications sector, particularly with the rollout of 5G networks, relies heavily on fiber optics. 5G technology requires a robust infrastructure that can handle large volumes of data with minimal latency, which fiber optics can provide.
3. Advancements in Fiber Optic Technology: Innovations in fiber optic technology, such as the development of bend-insensitive fibers and advancements in signal processing, are making fiber optic solutions more efficient and cost-effective. These technological improvements are expected to drive further adoption across various industries.
4. Increased Data Center Construction: The growth of cloud services and the increasing amount of data generated globally are fueling the construction of data centers, which rely on fiber optic networks for high-speed data transfer and connectivity.
5. Government Initiatives and Investments: Many governments worldwide are investing in fiber optic infrastructure to improve internet connectivity in urban and rural areas. These initiatives are expected to significantly boost market growth.
6. Rising Adoption in Healthcare and Other Sectors: Beyond telecommunications, sectors such as healthcare, where high-speed data transfer is critical for medical imaging and telemedicine, are increasingly adopting fiber optic technology. Additionally, industries like defense, automotive, and industrial manufacturing are also integrating fiber optics for their communication needs.

The market’s anticipated growth reflects these combined factors, positioning fiber optics as a cornerstone of future communication infrastructure.

Next up, three fiber optic technology trends every manufacturer should know, starting with fiber optic medical technology. According to NAI Group, “One of the benefits of fiber optic cables in medicine is the development of specialized surgical tools that allow surgeons to enter into small or damaged parts of the body and perform necessary operations at a much more efficient scale.”

These tools provide several advantages over traditional tools including the need for much smaller incisions resulting in less invasive surgery, as well as tools that tend to be more precise. While the specialized surgical tools don't provide the kind of manual feedback that comes when working directly with their hands, researchers are developing “fiber optic tools that provide surgeons with subtle and complex physical feedback that mimics direct touch. These tools show significant promise in further advancing medical technology and providing surgeons with even better tools to save lives.”

The second trend relates to telecommunications where fiber optic cables are allowing for the development of high-speed 5G internet globally. “Telecommunication companies are currently developing a network of millions of miles of fiber optic cables across the world,” writes NAI Group. “This will provide much greater internet access to billions of people, especially in developing countries.”

Third – the role of fiber optic cable assemblies in automation. “Fiber optic cables also have enabled developments toward automation in factories and warehouses,” NAI Group writes. “Technologies such as robotics, remote controls, and AI all require advanced fiber optic cables and cable assemblies to increase efficiency in automation and warehouse operations.” These advancements will contribute to the rise of “Industry 4.0,” where automation, AI, and robotics result in improved operations, enhanced workplace safety, and extended supply chains.

The future application of fiber optics is expected to involve smaller and more durable cable assembly designs with a very high data-carrying capacity. These progressions will pave the way for more advanced mechanical technology devices, faster internet and phone speeds, and increased levels of factory automation that require less human oversight.

Our third story is about distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), a technology that uses fiber optic cables to detect acoustic signals and measure strain along their length in real time. DAS systems use an optoelectronic device to process measurements, which can be made over long distances and in harsh environments. 

According to EarthScope Consortium, DAS systems use a device called an interrogator to send thousands of laser pulses into the fiber optic cable each second. The interrogator measures the light that scatters back from imperfections in the fiber, creating a “fingerprint” of the fiber. The system then compares the fingerprints to calculate how much the fiber has stretched between pulses. 

DAS systems can be used in a variety of applications, including pipeline monitoring, rail monitoring, perimeter monitoring, subsea monitoring, highway monitoring, and smart city applications. They also can be used to create seismic images of the seafloor and underlying geological structures by transforming marine cables into seismic receivers. These images are created by analyzing the echoes that bounce back from the signal when it hits the receivers and the vessel. The images can be used to support geohazard analysis and other subsurface exploration activities.

Finally, have you ever wondered how to make a fiber optics dress? If so, you’re in luck. YouTuber Crescent Shay likes to make things, including a shirt out of pasta, octopus shoes, and a ballgown out of 1,000 old phones.

She also made a fiber optics dress that took “more hours than (she) can count making it but, in the end, was just really, really proud of how it came out.” She said the dress was “actually super easy to move in” but you have to be careful not to damage the fabric. The dress is powered by four battery packs stuffed under her clothes “but aside from that it honestly just feels like you are wearing a normal dress. And of course, no matter where you go you can always see where you are going – it is really, really bright like a flashlight.”

Fiber optics transmit information as light pulses along a glass or plastic fiber. The key advantages of fiber optics over traditional copper cables include higher bandwidth and transmission speeds, longer distance capabilities, immunity to electromagnetic interference, and lower signal attenuation. Fiber optic cables are widely used in telecommunications, internet, cable television, computer networking, and various other applications that require high-speed data transmission over long distances. They have revolutionized the way we communicate and transfer information, enabling faster and more reliable data transfer across the globe.