Optical Communications: The Beginning

The first efforts by Alexander Graham Bell at optical communications by incoherent light are discussed. Those were very inefficient at the time but after the invention of the laser it was only a question of time when coherent optical communication will dominate the communications scene The beginning was slow because propagation both in air and in fibre waveguide was too large. Enormous efforts by the Corning Glass Works brought down the attenuation to a figure as low as a few dbs per kilometre making some further applications feasible. The next break-through was the invention of the fibre amplifier enabling the erection of long relay-free lines (maybe up to 10,000 km) possible range of applications was greatly extended by the invention of the fibre amplifier. Coherent light propagation in thin, single-mode fibres is discussed a very thin fibre is discussed. It is shown that an optical fibre can carry an enormous number of communication channels. The laser was invented just in time to help produce the signals, and it also became possible to produce pure enough glass fibres in which an optical signal could propagate with low attenuation. The invention of erbium-doped fibre amplifiers allowed them to be spread all over the world, including large number of lines under the oceans.