City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

192 CITY OF LIGHT
The Chinese also offered more than money. Their engineers knew how to
set up factories, package lasers, and design transmitters. Those skills nicely
complemented Hsieh’s expertise in making lasers and Nill’s background in
making and selling scientific instruments. They formed the company in 1980
and signed up with the Chinese, who promised to send engineers when Lasertron
was ready to get its production lines running. 76
Counting Installations
Through about 1980, you could easily count the number of major fiber systems
installed by telephone and cable television companies. The cable-TV
industry took a while to decide what they wanted, but the telephone industry
quickly settled on systems like Chicago. AT&T’s standard design, mirrored
through the American telephone industry, was for graded-index fibers and
gallium arsenide lasers to carry 45 million bits per second distances of several
miles between switching offices. The application was exactly what Charles
Kao had proposed, although the technology had changed considerably.
Initially, every new installation was an adventure. Engineers worried if
their brand-new technology could survive in the outside world. GTE installed
its first permanent fiber system in Indiana after finding it could save $1.5
million in construction costs by squeezing two fiber cables through a single
duct in downtown Fort Wayne. 77 Outside of town, a bulldozer plowed a 4foot
(1.2-meter) trench and laid fiber cable directly into the fresh cut. Allen
Kasiewicz, General Cable’s technical rep, watched uneasily but was relieved
when the first segment tested okay. On the next leg, the bulldozer bogged
down in a muddy stream. The installers summoned help and chained what
Kasiewicz still calls ‘‘the biggest ’dozer I’ve ever seen’’ to the one stuck in the
mud. The behemoth rumbled onward, pulling the smaller one which still
plowed the cable into the ground. Much to Kasiewicz’s amazement, the system
worked. 78 The cable engineers had done their job well.
Fibers were still a novelty at the time of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake
Placid, New York. Bell Labs talked about sending digital video over fibers
months in advance, but New York Telephone stalled and loaded its poles with
temporary coaxial cables. At the last minute ABC Television decided that
wasn’t enough. With the world watching—and millions of dollars of advertising
revenue at stake—the network wanted backup video feeds from the
Olympic arena to its local control center. The poles couldn’t hold any more
heavy metal cables, but they could hold a light fiber cable. It was too late to
install digital electronics, so Ira Jacobs’s group at Bell Labs hastily hooked up
standard video. The backup fiber system worked much better than the metal
cables and quickly became the primary video feed. For the first time, the world
saw fiber optics working—transmitting signals so clearly there was no sign
the glass was there.
The public took little notice, but engineers saw and believed. Lake Placid
was a torture test for coaxial cables. The sun baked them in the day and