The history of fiber optic

The optical fiber technology is one of the hop topics developed in the beginning of the 21th century and could substantially benefit applications dealing with lighting, sensing and communication systems.

Fiber optics is the contained transmission of light through long fiber rods of either glass or plastics from fiber optic patch cord supplier. 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. The method and materials invented by Maurer, Keck and Schultz opened the door to the commercialization of fiber optics, first for long-distance telephone service, and later for computer-related telecommunications (such as the Internet) and even medical devices (like the modern endoscope). The first all-optic fiber cable, TPC-5, that uses optical amplifiers was laid across the Pacific Ocean in 1996. The following year the Fiber Optic Link around the Globe (FLAG) became the longest single-cable network and the best fiber optic test equipment in the world and provided the infrastructure for the next generation of Internet applications.

Today, a variety of industries including fiber optic manufacture in china, the medical, military, telecommunication, industrial, data storage, networking, and broadcast industries are able to apply and use fiber optic technology in a variety of applications. More than 80 percent of the world's long-distance traffic is carried over optical fiber cables, 25 million kilometers of the cable Maurer, Keck and Schultz designed has been installed worldwide.