City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

TRYING TO SELL A DREAM 123
Meanwhile, Roberts pushed ahead, forming a consortium to develop lowloss
fibers, including the Post Office, STL, the Scottish optics company Barr &
Stroud, and British Titan Products, which made titanium and ultrapure materials.
Several days before the consortium’s first meeting on July 26, 1967,
Roberts returned from a short business trip to France and started driving
toward the south of England for a short holiday. On route, he suffered a severe
heart attack in the car. Realizing what was happening, he turned around and
drove himself to the hospital.
The seizure was a shock to everyone; just under six feet tall, Roberts was
thin, active, and had appeared fit. It was November before he returned to
work. He had to climb five flights of stairs to reach his office, which may have
contributed to a second heart attack in January 1968. 30 A bypass operation
followed, but the diligent Roberts insisted on receiving progress reports, which
his wife delivered to his hospital bed.
Pushing Hard at STL
Charles Kao sought clearer, purer glass at STL, driving the project ‘‘every way
that he could. He believed in it, and that’s what it took,’’ recalls Martin
Chown, who worked for him. 31 Management was largely skeptical with the
crucial exceptions of those in the line of command above Kao 31 —Sandbank,
Reeves, and Jock Marsh, STL’s managing director. Marsh didn’t come down
hard when Kao exceeded his budgets for travel and experiments.
Contracts from Roberts at the Post Office and Williams at the Ministry of
Defense provided vital support. ITT’s contribution was modest. Sandbank penciled
in $34,000 for fiber research in one early year. ‘‘It was very difficult to
get it through,’’ he recalls. 32 Reeves’s backing saved the day, because the
head of ITT laboratories had worked for him back in 1940. 33
The fiber communications project grew slowly. Optics were incidental to
Hockham, who left to form his own antenna technology group in mid-1967. 34
One early addition was Richard Epworth—a young engineer who had read
about Kao’s ideas in Wireless World. Epworth modified a laser transmitter to
send video signals through fibers instead of the air. Realizing that individual
single-mode fibers would not collect much light, he blew 70 segments of the
clearest fiber he could get into a 20-meter tube. The fibers had loss of about
one decibel per meter, a total of 20 decibels along their length, but they
carried the video signal the full length of the tube. 35 Students do better today
in science-fair projects, but in 1967 it was an important feasibility demonstration.
Kao soon realized that such demonstrations were not enough. Skeptics
focused their criticism on the key issue of glass transparency. Except for a
few small military systems, fiber communications would never work without
low-loss fibers. He decided the best way to answer the critics was to roll up
his sleeves and measure the best glasses he could find.