subject: Fibre Optic Cable – Where It All Started [print this page] Fibre Optic Cable Where It All Started Fibre Optic Cable Where It All Started
The history of fibre optic cable is dated way back to 1870. John Tyndall developed a principle based on the curve of stream water which is poured in to a container, and this principle gave way to the birth of fibre optics.
A version of fibre optic cable was then developed by John Logie Baird when he monopolized the technique of transmitting light in a glass rod for early colour TVs. The 1950s brought new developments and research ideas with regards to the transmission of images with the use of optical fibres that were successful in the field of medicine. In 1966 George Hockham and Charles Kao proposed the technology of information transmission in a glass fibre.
Another person who contributed for the development of fibre optic cable is Van Heel, a Dutch scientist who created the first cladding that was used with bundles in 1954. This fibre cladding has been very crucial for the fibre optic technology. The modern fibre cables will not function well without the cladding.
Our modern optical fibre cables consist of three layers:
Core where the light can be conducted to the cord length
Cladding this surrounds the cord and is multi-purpose because it protects the surface's total reflection from contamination externally and it can also synchronously retain the signal of the light and reduce cross talk between the cords.
Jacket/sleeve covers the cladding
Doctors Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz of Corning assimilated the development of the strand which ensures efficiency when transmitting different signals only with little signal loss which is very minimal. It was during 1977 that the actual commercial implementation of fibre optic cable really began. This was introduced to downtown Chicago and was then used for telecommunication.
The fibres of the fibres optic cable come in two different types, the single mode fibres and the multi-mode fibres. They have entered the telecommunication field and have been very successful, but the installation of these can be expensive. These are thinner wires compared to copper wires and carry a higher capacity. The light being transferred from one fibre to another will not interrupt with other fibres that are present in the cables.
