On role of fibre optic technology in information revolution
Answers
Everywhere on this planet hair-thin optical fibers carry vast quantities of information from place to place. There are many desirable properties of optical fibers for carrying this information. They have enormous information-carrying capacity, are low cost, and possess immunity from the many disturbances that can afflict electrical wires and wireless communication links. The superiority of optical fibers for carrying information from place to place is leading to their rapidly replacing older technologies. Optical fibers have played a key role in making possible the extraordinary growth in world-wide communications that has occurred in the last 25 years, and are vital in enabling the proliferating use of the Internet.
Of key importance in the course of these developments in information technology have been a few basic, but vitally significant, events. Principal among these are the invention and development of the laser, the growing appreciation that this might make optical communications practically useful, the production of very pure glass, which was sufficiently transparent that long distance transmission of light through glass fibers became practical, and the digital revolution. We will examine the role that each of these has played in creating the "Information Age."