City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics
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THREE GENERATIONS IN FIVE YEARS 189<br />
thought, each fiber could carry only a few signals. Only Hicks seriously<br />
thought it might be possible for one fiber to carry tens, hundreds, or even<br />
more separate wavelengths. Taking the idea a step farther, he envisioned that<br />
a single optical amplifier, using the laser principle, might simultaneously boost<br />
the strengths <strong>of</strong> the whole range <strong>of</strong> wavelengths passing through the fiber,<br />
amplifying all the signals at once.<br />
In his mind, Hicks put it all together, looking into the future and seeing<br />
an all-optical network, carrying light signals all the way to homes without<br />
bothering to change them back to electric currents. <strong>Fiber</strong>s and optics would<br />
go beyond being mere pipes to become part <strong>of</strong> the switches that routed calls<br />
through the network. He talked some about his ideas, earning a reputation<br />
as a wild-eyed visionary, but all that he wrote was patent applications. <strong>The</strong>n<br />
in his early fifties, he was broke, but he talked Chuck Lucy out <strong>of</strong> a quartermillion<br />
dollars from Corning. It wasn’t much to build a new technology, but<br />
Hicks had cut his entrepreneurial teeth on a shoestring budget. He set up<br />
shop in the l<strong>of</strong>t <strong>of</strong> an old building in central Massachusetts, and with a couple<br />
<strong>of</strong> helpers settled down to inventing a new fiber-optic network technology.<br />
He whimsically called his company 1984 Inc., because it would have so much<br />
transmission capacity that it could keep track <strong>of</strong> everybody all the time. 64<br />
<strong>Fiber</strong> development accelerated with the opening <strong>of</strong> the new windows. Each<br />
issue <strong>of</strong> Electronics Letters—the British journal that published the hottest developments—announced<br />
new wonders. Corning and Bell Labs pushed loss in<br />
their best laboratory fibers below 0.2 decibel per kilometer at 1.55 micrometers,<br />
to about 0.16 decibel.<br />
Semiconductor lasers advanced apace with fibers. Much to the surprise <strong>of</strong><br />
the establishment, long-wavelength lasers proved much more reliable than<br />
gallium arsenide. As the trend became obvious, Martlesham Heath shifted all<br />
its research from gallium arsenide to InGaAsP in a week. Initially frustrated<br />
because they had been making progress in gallium arsenide, developers<br />
changed their mind when they saw that the longer wavelengths did not trigger<br />
the growth <strong>of</strong> fatal flaws. ‘‘<strong>The</strong> wind was behind us,’’ says Alan Steventon.<br />
65<br />
Valtec Rides a Dangerous Growth Wave<br />
<strong>The</strong> revolution in telephone operations was more modest. Industry was trying<br />
to do the logical, cautious thing, grow by making systems based on technology<br />
that already worked, not the latest idea from the labs. That meant staying<br />
with gallium-arsenide lasers and graded-index fibers.<br />
<strong>The</strong>re was no denying fiber optics after its successes in Chicago, Long<br />
Beach, and Martlesham Heath. Valtec landed a contract to install a 4.2kilometer<br />
(2.6-mile) system for Central Telephone in Las Vegas, which wanted<br />
to show its fiber prowess when a big trade show came to town in December<br />
1977. 66 Marshall Hudson, freshly hired away from Corning, taught the workmen<br />
how to splice fibers and promised everyone who beat his target a six-