City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

Appendix B
A Fiber-Optic Chronology
Circa 2500 BC: Earliest known glass.
Roman Times: Glass is drawn into fibers.
1713: Réné deRéaumur makes spun glass fibers.
1790s: Claude Chappe invents ‘‘optical telegraph’’ in France.
1841: Daniel Colladon demonstrates light guiding in jet of
water in Geneva; it also is demonstrated in London
and Paris.
1842: Daniel Colladon publishes report on light guiding in
Comptes Rendus; Jacques Babinet also reports light
guiding in water jets and bent glass rods.
1853: Paris Opera uses Colladon’s water jet in the opera
Faust.
1854: John Tyndall demonstrates light guiding in water jets
at the suggestion of Michael Faraday, duplicating
but not acknowledging Colladon.
1873: Jules de Brunfaut makes glass fibers that can be woven
into cloth.
1880: Alexander Graham Bell invents Photophone.
1880: William Wheeler invents system of light pipes to illuminate
homes from an electric arc lamp in basement,
Concord, Mass.
1884: International Health Exhibition in South Kensington
district of London has first fountains with illuminated
water jets, designed by Sir Francis Bolton.
Colladon republishes his 1842 paper to show the
idea was his.
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