Can You Hear Me Now · Episode 8 of 14 · 28 min
Light in a Glass Thread
In 1966 glass fibers lost almost all their light within about twenty meters, yet one English engineer said purer glass could carry calls for kilometers. The episode follows Bell Labs' transistor and information theory, Corning's fiber, the internet protocols and the 1984 breakup of AT&T. It ends with the fiber boom after 1998, built on a forecast of traffic doubling every hundred days that proved false.
Who's who
- Charles K. KaoEngineer who argued in 1966 that impurities caused glass losses
- George HockhamKao's colleague and co-author of the 1966 paper
- Claude Shannon+1 more episodeBell Labs mathematician who founded information theory in 1948
- John BardeenBell Labs physicist who co-made the first transistor
- Walter BrattainBell Labs physicist who co-made the first transistor
- Robert MaurerLed the Corning team that made the first low-loss fiber
- Vint CerfCo-author of the 1974 internetworking design
- Harold GreeneFederal judge who approved the AT&T settlement in 1982
Where it happens
- Harlow, Essex, EnglandSite of the laboratory where the fiber proposal was developed
- Corning, New YorkHome of the Corning Glass Works that made the first low-loss fiber
- Bell Labs, New JerseyBirthplace of the transistor and information theory
- University of California, Los AngelesSent the first Arpanet message in 1969
- Chicago, Illinois+15 more episodesFiber went into service under the city in 1977
Timeline
- December 16, 1947Bardeen and Brattain make the first working transistor at Bell Labs
- 1948Shannon publishes A Mathematical Theory of Communication
- July 1966Kao and Hockham publish their paper on glass fiber waveguides
- August 1970Corning researchers make a fiber with losses below Kao's target
- January 1, 1984The Bell System breakup takes effect
- July 21, 2002WorldCom files the largest bankruptcy in American history to that date
Still debated
Whether the breakup unleashed innovation or scattered Bell Labs is unsettled, since both happened. Estimates of how much fiber went unused after the boom vary with what is counted, and the fiber glut can be called a waste or a gift depending on the time scale.