City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

180 CITY OF LIGHT
The Rise of Irving Kahn
Fiber optics also caught the eye of Irving B. Kahn, a colorful promoter and
nephew of composer Irving Berlin. Kahn had made a fortune from the Tele-
PrompTer Corporation, which he launched in 1950 to sell TelePrompTers to
cue forgetful actors with their lines. He later made TelePrompTer an early
giant in cable television but courted local officials a bit too hard. At the height
of his success in 1971, he was convicted of perjury and bribing officials of
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. He resigned from TelePrompTer and spent 20
months in jail. 19 Forced to sell his stock, he emerged from prison with cash
and new ideas, including using fiber optics to carry signals for cable television.
Short, stocky, and physically powerful, Kahn had a blend of charm, clout,
and arrogance that meant power in the entertainment industry. He found a
couple of former Bell Labs scientists and helped them set up a small fibermaking
company called Fiber Communications Inc. His contacts helped the
little company land a contract to supply TelePrompTer with one of the first
fiber systems used in cable television. He prophesied that fiber would soon
replace coaxial cables for cable television. Many cable companies already were
working on fiber. Most of the rest scoffed at him, but Kahn found open ears
at Insilco, a large Connecticut company that owned Times Wire & Cable Co.
Kahn persuaded Insilco to merge its subsidiary with Fiber Communications.
Insilco contributed a complete coaxial cable plant that supported an ongoing
business. Fiber Communications contributed little more than a draw tower
and Kahn’s virtuoso salesmanship. 20 Veterans of the fiber industry still marvel
at the results. When the deal was done in December 1976, Kahn’s group
owned 49 percent of the new Times Fiber Communications Inc. 21 , 22
From Atlanta to Chicago
The behemoth AT&T paid little heed to would-be competitors; the telephone
monopoly had long made most of the equipment it used. The next step in the
Bell System plan was to run fiber cables through urban underground ducts
and test them with live telephone traffic. Telephone engineers worried that a
cable full of glass threads would shatter like a plate-glass window or degrade
rapidly when exposed to the harsh conditions in manholes, sometimes filled
with water and inhabited by wildlife from rats to alligators. AT&T ran 1.6
miles (2.6 kilometers) of fiber cable through buried ducts linking three buildings
in the downtown loop district of Chicago. It was typical of the sites where
AT&T planned to use fibers first: urban centers where underground ducts
were crammed with copper cables. A single fiber cable no larger than a garden
hose could hold 144 fibers, and four fiber cables could fit into a duct built
to house one fire-hose sized copper cable. Yet each fiber cable had many times
more capacity than the bulkier copper cable. Replacing the old copper cables