Fiber Optics

Paper Summary:

This paper looks at fiber optics, a technology that has been developing and improving the way the world communicates for more than two centuries. It examines its origins in the year 1790, when a French engineer named Claude Chappe invented a system for sending messages, and how Chappe's optical communication system incorporated the use of tall towers with a series of semaphores mounted on top of each tower. It also looks at its development over the years from its use by Alexander Graham Bell in his "photophone" to the first optical telephone communication system created in 1977.

From the Paper:

"William Wheeler's contribution to fiber optics came during the same year as Alexander Graham Bell's. His contribution was, ironically looked over during his time, just as Bell's was. William Wheeler found a way to run pipes, which contained light through buildings and such that aided in the illumination of dark areas. He accomplished this by coating the tubes with a highly reflective substance that carried the light through the whole tube. His patented mechanism was over looked because around the same time Thomas Edison had invented the "electric lamp" a.k.a. the light bulb. Just as Bell's photophone, Wheeler's mechanism wasn't as practical as others."

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