The Invention of Fiber Optics

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Fiber optics is the contained transmission of light through long fiber rods of either glass or plastics. The light travels by a process of internal reflection. The core medium of the rod or cable is more reflective than the material surrounding the core. That causes the light to keep being reflected back into the core where it can continue to travel down the fiber. Fiber optic cables are used for transmitting voice, images and other data at close to the speed of light. There were many inventors of fiber optics, but only one could be first, and his name is John Tyndall. In 1854, he presented to the Royal Society that you could bend light through water. Later on many others such as Henry Saint-Rene, David Smith, and Clarence W. Hansell, to improve on Tyndall’s discovery with glass and mirrors. In 1880, Alexander Graham Bell invented his 'Photophone', which transmitted a voice signal on a beam of light. Bell focused sunlight with a mirror and then talked into a mechanism that vibrated the mirror. At the receiving end, a detector picked up the vibrating beam and decoded it back into a voice the same way a phone did with electrical signals. Many things - - a cloudy day for instance -- could interfere with the Photophone, causing Bell to stop any further research with this invention. In 1930, German medical student, Heinrich Lamm was the first person to put together a bundle of optical fibers to carry an image. Lamm's goal was to look inside inaccessible parts of the body. During his experiments, he reported transmitting the image of a light bulb. The image was of poor quality, however, his effort to file a patent was denied because of Hansell's British patent. Fiber optics led to light up toys that you see on bedside tables, it even led to the use of the Internet in remote regions! And of course we do in fact do use
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