City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

APPENDIX B 269
so fine they transmit only a single mode of light.
Elias Snitzer recognizes the fibers as single-mode
waveguides and applies for a patent (with Hicks)
in 1960.
May 16, 1960: Theodore Maiman demonstrates the first laser at
Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu.
December 12, 1960: Ali Javan makes first helium-neon laser at Bell Labs,
the first laser to emit a steady beam.
Circa 1960: George Goubau at Army Electronics Command Laboratory,
Stew Miller of Bell Telephone Laboratories,
and Murray Ramsay of Standard Telecommunication
Laboratories begin investigating confocal optical
waveguides with regularly spaced lenses.
January 1961: Charles C. Eaglesfield of STL proposes hollow optical
pipeline made of reflective pipes.
May 1961: Eli Snitzer of American Optical publishes theoretical
description of single-mode fibers.
1961: Narinder Kapany founds Optics Technology Inc.
1962: Experiments at STL show high loss in Eaglesfield’s
hollow optical pipeline.
1962: AT&T starts converting to digital telephone transmission.
September-
October 1962: Four groups nearly simultaneously make first semiconductor
diode lasers, which emit pulses at liquidnitrogen
temperature. Robert N. Hall’s group at General
Electric is first.
1962: Dwight Berreman of Bell Labs proposes gas lens waveguide.
1962–1963: STL abandons millimeter waveguide development.
Alec Reeves pushes optical waveguides but sees
problems with confocal lens waveguides.
1962–1963: Experiments show high loss when sending laser
beams through atmosphere.
1963: Heterostructures proposed for semiconductor lasers.
1963–1964: Antoni E. Karbowiak of STL realizes that unclad
transparent optical waveguides would have to be
impractically thin. He considers clad optical fibers,
but thinks a flexible thin-film waveguide would
have lower loss.
October 1964: Charles Koester and Eli Snitzer describe first optical
amplifier, using neodymium-doped glass.
December 1964: Charles K. Kao takes over STL optical communication
program when Karbowiak leaves to become
chair of electrical engineering at the University of
New South Wales. Kao and George Hockham soon