OPPapers.com

Tech

Throughout time, speed and efficiency in the telecommunications industry has progressed at a rapid pace due to fiber optic technology. In 1979, AT&T revolutionized the telecommunications industry by producing a medium for data transmission which used light, called fiber optic cable. This medium created a bandwidth of 44.736 Mbps and could multiplex 672 trunk circuits onto one fiber (Cole, 2000). However, this invention was only the beginning of a great addition to telecommunications, one that would change the industry forever.

Even though AT&T introduced fiber optic technology in 1979, they weren’t the first company to think of such a creative idea. The concept of exchanging data by the use of light was thought of by Alexander Graham Bell in the late 1800’s. Bell always thought of possibilities that pulses of light could transmit voice signals, but Bell never had a dependable light source to test the idea (Cheo, 1990). In 1880, Bell patented a phone using optical transmission called the Photophone. Bell’s invention failed because it used air as the medium to transmit light, rather than the glass fibers that are used today. Copper wire was simply more reliable than Bell’s invention at the time, leading to the failure of his Photophone (Hecht, 1999).

Expanding on Bell’s idea, English scientist John Logie Bard and United States scientist Clarence W. Hansell patented the idea of using hollow glass pipes to transmit television images in the 1920’s. However, the tubes patented were very poor quality and experienced signal loss very easily. Bard and Hansell also ran into the same problem Bell did, not having a constant, intense light source (Hecht, 1999).

Solving Bard and Hansell’s problem, engineers at Laser Diode Labs invented the continuous wave laser in 1975. This laser was smaller than a grain of sand, but made the use of fiber optics in telephony possible. In 1987, another great achievement was made in the fiber optics industry; this achievement was the...