City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics

NOTES TO PAGES 80–88 293
15. Reflection dropped during daytime, so transmission was possible only at
night.
16. Orrin E. Dunlap, Jr., Radio’s 100 Men of Science (Harper & Brothers Publishers,
New York, 1944, pp. 269–272 on Hansell).
17. Clarence W. Hansell, ‘‘Radio-relay systems development by the Radio Corporation
of America,’’ Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Mar. 1945,
pp. 156–168.
18. Richard J. O’Rorke, Jr., 1990 World’s Submarine Telephone Cable Systems
(US Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C., 1991; see pp. 112–113,
123).
19. Murray Ramsay, telephone interview, Sept. 12, 1994.
20. Kenneth W. Cattermole, ‘‘A. H. Reeves: the man behind the engineer,’’
IEE Review, Nov. 1990, pp. 383–386.
21. Ibid.
22. Richard Epworth, interview, Dec. 2, 1994.
23. His notebooks on the paranormal were so thoroughly mingled with his
other work that the management of BNR-Europe inadvertently put one on display
in a case at Harlow. This wasn’t discovered until I visited in late 1994, when
Richard Epworth went to check the notebook and examined its contents. Epworth
interview.
24. R. V. Jones, The Wizard War: British Scientific Intelligence 1939–1945 (Coward,
McCann & Geohegan, New York, 1978, p. 276).
25. Reeves experimented with ‘‘two-terminal’’ devices called diodes, where two
wires make contact with different parts of a semiconductor chip. Transistors have
three terminals, a design that lets a voltage applied to one terminal modulate the
current flowing between the other two. Cattermole, ‘‘A. H. Reeves.’’
26. A. G. Fox and W. D. Warters, ‘‘Waveguide research,’’ in S. Millman, ed.,
A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: Vol. 5. Communications
Science 1925–1980 (AT&T Bell Laboratories, Indianapolis, 1984, p. 264).
27. Richard Dyott, telephone interview, June 23, 1994.
28. E. F. O’Neill, ed., A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: Vol.
7. Transmission Technology 1925–1975, (AT&T Bell Laboratories, New York, 1985,
pp. 624–627).
29. Clarke actually proposed adding a transmitter to a manned space station,
not launching a satellite dedicated only to automatic communications (Arthur C.
Clarke, ‘‘Extra-terrestrial relays,’’ Wireless World, Oct. 1945, pp. 305–308). Four
decades later, Clarke remembered that he had mentioned an early version of the
idea in a brief letter to the magazine in February of that year, and in a letter that
he circulated to friends in May. See Arthur C. Clarke, Ascent to Orbit (Wiley-
Interscience, New York, 1984). He cites a paper by C. W. Hansell on groundbased
radio relays.
30. Pierce published fiction as J. J. Coupling; he remains a member of the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
31. Ramsay telephone interview.
32. Antoni E. Karbowiak telephone interview, Feb. 5, 1995.
33. Reeves tested hollow-cathode discharge lamps. W. A. Atherton, ‘‘Pioneers
16: Charles Kuen Kao, father of optical communications,’’ Electronics & Wireless
World, Apr. 1988, pp. 406–407.
34. The others were John Lytollis, Ian Turner, Bernard Fairchild, and Ron
Lomax. Murray Ramsay, letter to author, Jan. 12, 1997.