Sir Charles Kao Kuen was a Chinese physicist and Nobel laureate who contributed to the development and use of fiber optics in telecommunications. In the 1960s, Kao created various methods to combine glass fibers with lasers in order to transmit digital data, which laid the groundwork for the evolution of the Internet.
Kao in 2004
A bundle of silica glass fibers for optical communication, which are the de facto worldwide standard. Kao also first publicly suggested that silica glass of high purity is an ideal material for long range optical communication.
Alexander Graham Bell, pioneer of telecommunication and an alumnus of University College London (UCL), was awarded the first U.S. patent for telephone in 1876. After 90 years in 1966, Kao and Hockham published their groundbreaking article in fiber-optic communication. Kao is also an alumnus of UCL, and was awarded the prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Medal of IEEE in 1985. Kao was awarded an honorary doctorate by UCL in 2010.
Guglielmo Marconi, pioneer of wireless telecommunication, was awarded half of the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 2009, the century anniversary of Marconi's Nobel, Kao was awarded half of the same prize for his pioneer work on optical fiber which has "rewired the world". Kao was also awarded the Marconi Prize in 1985, and is a Fellow of the Marconi Society.
An optical fiber, or optical fibre, is a flexible glass or plastic fiber that can transmit light from one end to the other. Such fibers find wide usage in fiber-optic communications, where they permit transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths than electrical cables. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because signals travel along them with less loss and are immune to electromagnetic interference. Fibers are also used for illumination and imaging, and are often wrapped in bundles so they may be used to carry light into, or images out of confined spaces, as in the case of a fiberscope. Specially designed fibers are also used for a variety of other applications, such as fiber optic sensors and fiber lasers.
A bundle of optical fibers
A TOSLINK fiber optic audio cable with red light shone in one end
Colladon's "light fountain"
A wall-mount cabinet containing optical fiber cables. The yellow cables are single mode fibers; the orange and aqua cables are multi-mode fibers.
