HISTORY OF FIBER OPTICS
This week’s segment of “The History of Fiber Optics” is taken from George Gilder’s book, Telecosm. The light our eyes can see is only a tiny slice of the full range of “colors” (wavelengths) that exist or can be created. Each wavelength has its own distinct characteristics—some are better at transmitting raw power, others for traveling long distances, and still others for carrying digital bits. Maxwell’s rainbow forms the core of virtually every significant modern technology, but unfortunately his life was ended early by cancer at age forty-eight. Maxwell’s work empowered last century titans such as Erwin Schrödinger, Hendrik Lorentz, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman and hundreds more, to create the edifice of twentieth-century quantum and post quantum physics that unleashed the computer age, fiber optics and almost all other modern technologies. Although pure scientists hate the idea, it is engineers and entrepreneurs who ratify their work. Until theory is embodied in a device, it’s really not physics, but metaphysics. Newton’s ideas burst forth as the industrial revolution. Quantum Theory triumphed in the atomic bomb and the microchip. In contrast to the intriguing perplexities of particle physics—Maxwell’s rainbow may seem like child’s play. But, as we progress through the twenty-first century, the spectrums infinite spread of capabilities is this centuries driving force. As Maxwell and others discovered, the speed of light is a basic constant in our universe—no matter the speed of the observer or medium. Frequencies and wavelengths may change, but light speed delay—the time it takes to propagate an electromagnetic wave—never changes. The speed of light is a crucial enabler and also the speed limit that communications can travel through a fiber optic strand or free space and that speed limit cannot “currently” be exceeded, a fact that most likely will forever keep us from the most distant planets and universes. Wavelengths and frequencies above 14 gigahertz (billion)–-at wavelengths running from the millimeters of microwaves down to nanometers (one billionth) of visible light—is the new frontier and it’s these frequencies that command some fifty-thousand times more communications potential than all the lower frequencies put together. A factor of some 10 to the 25th power stands between the longest and shortest known wavelengths and as Michael Denton observed: A stack of playing cards 10 to the 25th power high would stretch halfway across the observable universe. Seventy percent of our sun’s light and heat occupies the bandwidth between near-ultraviolet and near infrared—the width of the edge of just a single card in Denton’s cosmic stack. This little sliver of spectrum sustains all life on earth while Maxwell opened the rest of it up for human use.
> Read More Information About Us
> More Articles Written By Our Staff
- Celebrating 20 Years Of Community At The Stand - April 12, 2024
- First Positive Case Of Chronic Wasting Disease In Indiana - April 12, 2024
- Southwest Allen County Schools Embark On Major Tree Plantings - April 12, 2024