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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A VISION OF THE FUTURE 85<br />
Engineers call that technique pulse code modulation, and today it’s the<br />
standard way to transmit digitized voice and video signals around the world.<br />
Yet when Reeves filed his patent application, the state <strong>of</strong> the telephone art<br />
was big black Bakelite phones with rotary dials, connected by clattering mechanical<br />
switches and banks <strong>of</strong> switchboards into which operators plugged<br />
wires by hand. <strong>The</strong> first transistor was a decade in the future; the vacuumtube<br />
electronics <strong>of</strong> the time were too slow to make Reeves’s idea work. ITT<br />
never collected a penny in royalties on his patent, but they recognized his<br />
genius.<br />
Reeves’s colleagues fondly remember him as unfailingly open and honest,<br />
even ‘‘saintly.’’ 21 He served as a scoutmaster, worked for charities, and tried<br />
to help delinquent boys. He also was eccentric. He worked from midday to 3<br />
A.M., <strong>of</strong>ten in a spare bedroom that served as a home laboratory, and would<br />
call co-workers at 2 A.M. to share his bright ideas. He sometimes appeared at<br />
work wearing a tie in place <strong>of</strong> a belt, and a crocodile clip—used to clamp<br />
electronic wires together temporarily—as a tie clasp. 22 In his spare time, he<br />
experimented with the paranormal, trying to understand dowsing, mental<br />
telepathy, and psychokinesis. 23 He was not a true believer, but his restless<br />
mind liked to explore unconventional ideas.<br />
Invading German troops chased Reeves from Paris in 1940. Back in England<br />
he was slow to embrace war work, but eventually devised the Oboe<br />
radar system, the most precise tool for guiding Allied bombers to their targets.<br />
24 After the war, ITT moved him to its new Standard Telecommunication<br />
Laboratories, a subsidiary <strong>of</strong> Standard Telephones and Cables. At STL, Reeves<br />
developed a family <strong>of</strong> semiconductor devices, later eclipsed by transistors, 25<br />
and remained heavily involved in military systems. He also looked to the<br />
future <strong>of</strong> civilian communications.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Pipe Dream<br />
By 1950, the telecommunications establishment thought the next logical step<br />
was to use microwave frequencies above 10 gigahertz, called millimeter waves<br />
because their waves are millimeters long. Wires were the local streets serving<br />
home and <strong>of</strong>fice phones; coaxial cables and microwaves were the main roads<br />
linking local telephone switching <strong>of</strong>fices in urban areas. But long-distance<br />
traffic was growing steadily, and the industry wanted to replace its aging<br />
microwave relays with a higher-capacity intercity backbone network, like<br />
America wanted high-speed interstate highways to carry trucks and cars<br />
across the country. Multiplying the carrier frequency by a factor <strong>of</strong> 10 promised<br />
the extra communications capacity, as well as beams that could be focused<br />
more tightly toward relay receivers.<br />
Unfortunately, the shorter the wavelength, the more <strong>of</strong>ten weather gets in<br />
the way. Radio waves an inch or more long don’t see clouds, rain, and fog,<br />
but water droplets can block millimeter waves. That wouldn’t work for phone<br />
companies; their customers don’t want to wait until the rain stops to call