Discuss “Fiber optics celebrates 40th anniversary with new innovations”

Happy 40th! That’s right, fiber optics technology is over the hill. Not retiring or fizzling out, this technology continues to improve with age and is still a driving force in the ways in which we make telephone calls, watch cable TV, and use the Internet.

Before fiber optic technology was developed, electronic communication was conducted over copper lines with information passed via electrons. The inefficiencies associated with copper technology over long distances spawned the need for something better.

In 1966, two engineers at Standard Telecommunication Laboratories, Charles Kao and George Hockham, toyed with the idea that glass fibers could be used to transfer information by light. Thus began fiber optics and the eventual ability to...