City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

146 CITY OF LIGHT
these nice low losses.’’ 46 Bob Maurer’s strategy had paid off. Half a dozen
years earlier, fiber optic communications had been merely the dream of a
Chinese immigrant to England. Charles Kao had spread his dream around the
world. Now scientists working in a western New York town with a population
of only 13,000 people had made it a reality.
At the moment of triumph, the deluge struck. Hurricane Agnes swept
across Pennsylvania and dumped heavy rains on western New York, causing
disastrous floods. The hillside research lab was safe, but Corning and other
towns in the Chemung River valley were not. Corning scientists and managers
dropped everything to spend weeks helping the community clean up.
Yet even in the midst of the disaster word of the new fibers percolated upward.
Bill Armistead spotted Schultz while the two were helping flood victims in
Corning and congratulated him. ‘‘Pete, that’s fantastic. You really did it!’’ 47
When the mud and the water were gone, the Corning fiber team went
back to their lab. They carefully measured fiber loss from the edge of the
ultraviolet into the infrared. It was near four decibels per kilometer in two
critical parts of the infrared where lasers emit light: 800 to 850 nanometers,
and near 1050 nanometers. They identified traces of water as responsible for
most of the remaining absorption. In December 1972, Keck, Maurer, and
Schultz wrote a paper reporting prospects for low-loss fibers, in which they
predicted, ‘‘Total attenuation of about 2 decibels per kilometer in the region
beyond 800 nanometers thus appears possible.’’ 48 That meant fibers made of
doped silica could carry light ten times farther than Charles Kao had thought
would be necessary.
Optical fibers had crossed the threshold for communications. Much work
remained to be done. Fibers had to be fine tuned to meet system requirements.
Telephone companies worried how they could transfer light into fiber cores.
Light sources remained an issue, although progress was being made on semiconductor
lasers. Fiber strength had to be improved. Coatings were needed to
prevent damage during handling. Cable structures and manufacturing technology
had to be developed.
Nonetheless, fibers were looking better as field trials made the millimeter
waveguide look worse. With the right supporting technology, it looked like
Dick Dyott might get his chance to thread fiber-optic cables through buried
millimeter waveguides.