Download City of light: the story of fiber optics by Jeff Hecht PDF

By Jeff Hecht

City of Light tells the tale of fiber optics, tracing its transformation from 19th-century parlor trick into the basis of our international communications community. Written for a vast viewers via a journalist who has coated the sector for 20 years, the booklet is a full of life account of either the folk and the guidelines in the back of this progressive technology.
The uncomplicated proposal underlying fiber optics was once first explored within the 1840s while researchers used jets of water to lead mild in laboratory demonstrations. the belief stuck the general public eye many years later whilst it used to be used to create attractive illuminated fountains at the various nice Victorian exhibitions. the fashionable model of fiber optics—using versatile glass fibers to transmit light—was stumbled on independently 5 instances during the first half the century, and one among its first key purposes was once the endoscope, which for the 1st time allowed physicians to appear contained in the physique with out surgical procedure. Endoscopes turned useful in 1956 while a school undergraduate came upon tips on how to make strong glass fibers with a tumbler cladding.
With the discovery of the laser, researchers grew attracted to optical communications. whereas Bell Labs and others attempted to ship laser beams in the course of the surroundings or hole mild pipes, a small crew at regular Telecommunication Laboratories checked out guiding gentle by means of obvious fibers. Led via Charles ok. Kao, they proposed the assumption of fiber-optic communications and verified that opposite to what many researchers idea glass may be made transparent sufficient to transmit mild over nice distances. Following those principles, Corning Glass Works built the 1st low-loss glass fibers in 1970.
From this element fiber-optic communications constructed swiftly. the 1st experimental cellphone hyperlinks have been established on stay mobilephone site visitors in 1977 and inside part a dozen years long-distance businesses have been laying fiber cables for his or her nationwide spine structures. In 1988, the 1st transatlantic fiber-optic cable attached Europe with North the USA, and now fiber optics are the main aspect in international communications.
The tale maintains this present day as fiber optics unfold during the communique grid that connects houses and workplaces, developing large info pipelines and changing copper wires. The ebook concludes with a glance at a number of the interesting power advancements of this know-how.

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408; cutaway (below) by author. GUIDING LIGHT AND LUMINOUS FOUNTAINS 21 in voltaic arcs of great power and intensity, for if more than one arc is maintained with the same current of electricity, the light generated becomes rapidly less, and therefore dearer, as the number of arcs or lights is increased. 33 Wheeler examined every detail, down to the placement of screws holding pipe segments together. At the heart of his idea were hollow glass pipes, clear on the inside, coated with silver on the outside, then covered with asphalt to prevent scratches and tarnish.

8 Cloth of white spun glass resembled silver; fibers drawn from yellow-orange glass looked golden when woven into fabric. Although the glass fabrics looked alluring, even enthusiasts noted that ‘‘the spinning requires extraordinary dexterity and constant attention . . ’’9 Hanging by a Thread of Glass The properties of spun glass caught the eye of Charles Vernon Boys, a young demonstrator of physics at the Royal College of Science in the South Ken- 30 CITY OF LIGHT sington district of London. His passion was building sensitive scientific instruments; the classes he had to teach were unwelcome interruptions.

He had started with ordinary glass, probably whatever lay readily at hand in his laboratory, but like bread, glass can be made from many recipes. Strictly speaking, glass is a solid inorganic material that never crystallized as it cooled from molten form. Some materials form glasses when cooled quickly; many others do not. The most important ingredient in common glasses is silicon dioxide, a durable mineral known as silica. Nature can mold silica into clear crystalline quartz, but we usually find it as sand.

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