City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

162 CITY OF LIGHT
Marsh saw the promise in fiber optics and put promising ideas before rigid
rules. The word went up to Harold Geneen at the very top, who asked STL
to demonstrate fiber optics for top ITT managers in Brussels. The technology
was on a roll.
A successful television experiment helped convince Marsh to push ahead
with the IEE demonstration. BBC engineers were testing digital transmission
of color television signals. They started with a length of millimeter waveguide,
supposedly the digital transmission medium of the future, which the Post
Office had installed at its new research lab at Martlesham Heath. They needed
three weeks to get their television signals through the waveguide, 10 and even
then it never worked for more than a few minutes at a time because the
signal hopped between modes. Then the BBC engineers asked Chown about
trying fiber optics.
They set aside another three weeks to test a fiber system that Chown and
another STL engineer brought to their lab. The two arrived at 9 A.M. but had
to go out and buy a vacuum flask to hold liquid nitrogen to cool their laser
before they could set up their system. By 10:45, a small reel of fiber was
carrying the digitized video signal and Chown was marveling at the crystalclear
color version of ‘‘Playschool,’’ a program his children watched in muddy
black and white at home. 11 Beating the millimeter waveguide hands down
was a big morale boost. Ramsay says, ‘‘That convinced us that fiber was a
transmission medium that had a future.’’ 12
Chown carefully took apart the BBC demonstration system and carefully
put the pieces back together in exactly the same way at the exhibit hall. Once
again it worked. As the royal party approached, security pushed Chown off
among the unauthorized. Ramsay wondered where he had disappeared but
soldiered on and proudly showed his new marvel to Queen Elizabeth.
The BBC had lost its color signal, so STL had hastily borrowed a color
signal from the rival Independent Television (ITV). Otherwise, the display
worked perfectly. The Queen dutifully watched for five minutes before going
on to the next exhibit. As the crowds milled about, Chown found himself
alone to demonstrate the system to her husband Prince Philip. The prince
stayed for nearly half an hour, prompted by Lord Louis Mountbatten to ask
probing questions which amazed Chown with their acuity. 13 Trained as an
engineer, Mountbatten already knew about fiber optics. Two years earlier, he
had told a laser meeting in Southampton about prospects for ‘‘fiber optics
connecting every British home with huge information centers.’’ 14 STL was
showing he was right.
The audience with the Queen was a symbolic milestone, but Lord Mountbatten’s
interest had far more practical import. He was a patron of engineering,
a top-level advisor with serious clout behind the scenes in the British
government. 15 Nobody could pretend that all the problems were solved when
the laser sat in a flask of liquid nitrogen, but the demonstration alerted the
British establishment to the potential of fiber-optic communications.