City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics JEFF HECHT OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS City of Light THE SLOAN TECHNOLOGY SERIES Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb Richard Rhodes Dream Reaper: The Story of an Old-Fashioned Inventor in the High-Stakes World of Modern Agriculture Craig Canine Turbulent Skies: The History of Commercial Aviation Thomas A. Heppenheimer Tube: The Invention of Television David E. Fisher and Marshall Jon Fisher The Invention that Changed the World: How a Small Group of Radar Pioneers Won the Second World War and Launched a Technological Revolution Robert Buderi Computer: A History of the Information Machine Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray Naked to the Bone: Medical Imaging in the Twentieth Century Bettyann Kevles A Commotion in the Blood: A Century of Using the Immune System to Battle Cancer and Other Diseases Stephen S. Hall Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology Robert Pool The One Best Way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the Enigma of Efficiency Robert Kanigel Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddesen Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land, Inventor of Instant Photography Victor McElheny City of Light: The Story of Fiber Optics Jeff Hecht Visions of Technology: A Century of Provocative Readings edited by Richard Rhodes Last Big Cookie Gary Dorsey (forthcoming) City of Light The Story of Fiber Optics JEFF HECHT 1 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sa˜o Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright ᭧ 1999 by Jeff Hecht Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2004 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hecht, Jeff. City of light : the story of fiber optics / by Jeff Hecht. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-510818-3; 0-19-516255-2 (pbk.) 1. Fiber optics. I. Title. TA1800.H42 1999 621.36'92—dc21 98-6135 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Lois, Leah, and Jolyn THE SLOAN TECHNOLOGY SERIES Technology is the application of science, engineering, and industrial organization to create a human-built world. It has led, in developed nations, to a standard of living inconceivable a hundred years ago. The process, however, is not free of stress; by its very nature, technology brings change in society and undermines convention. It affects virtually every aspect of human endeavor: private and public institutions, economic systems, communications networks, political structures, in- ternational affiliations, the organization of societies, and the condition of human lives. The effects are not one-way; just as technology changes society, so too do societal structures, attitudes, and mores affect technology. But perhaps because technology is so rapidly and completely assimilated, the profound interplay of technology and other social endeavors in modern history has not been sufficiently recognized. The Sloan Foundation has had a long-standing interest in deepening public understanding about modern technology, its origins, and its impact on our lives. The Sloan Technology Series, of which the present volume is a part, seeks to present to the general reader the stories of the development of critical twentieth- century technologies. The aim of the series is to convey both the technical and human dimensions of the subject: the invention and effort entailed in devising the technologies and the comforts and stresses they have introduced into contempo- rary life. As the century draws to an end, it is hoped that the series will disclose a past that might provide perspective on the present and inform the future. The Foundation has been guided in its development of the Sloan Technology Series by a distinguished advisory committee. We express deep gratitude to John Armstrong, Simon Michael Bessie, Samuel Y. Gibbon, Thomas P. Hughes, Victor McElheny, Robert K. Merton, Elting E. Morison (deceased), and Richard Rhodes. The Foundation has been represented on the committee by Ralph E. Gomory, Arthur L. Singer, Jr., Hirsh G. Cohen, and Doron Weber. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Preface to the Paperback Edition ‘‘It’s not over,’’ Don Keck told me in 1995 when I interviewed him about the development of fiber optics. The intervening years proved he was right. The bandwidth revolution that Will Hicks foresaw has come to pass. Indeed, the revolution has had consequences that no one expected. For the first time, the telecommunications industry had more bandwidth than it knew what to do with. Combined with the emergence of the World Wide Web and expan- sion of the Internet, the bandwidth revolution has taken the fiber-optics world on a roller-coaster ride that has soared to the heights of overnight wealth and plummeted to the depths of economic ruin. A new epilogue reflects those tumultuous times. My original story wound down with the completion of the global fiber-optic telecommunications net- work around 1990. The epilogue covers the bandwidth revolution. It starts with the technology that opened the door, the optical amplifier, which I had mentioned only briefly before. Then it shows the origins of the boom in optical networks, which evolved into the telecommunications bubble that led to to- day’s economic bust. The dot.com companies that grew with the Internet started the technology stock bubble, but fiber-optic communication rode it to the bitter end. The bold dream of a planet-spanning network wound up in bankruptcy court. The story of fiber optics isn’t complete without the tale of the boom, the bubble, and the bust. I have room here to cover it only briefly. Having ridden that particular roller coaster, I’m still a bit wobbly on my feet, trying to understand what really happened. Telecommunications was swept up in the economic tempest of a speculative bubble, like railroads were in the late nine- viii PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION teenth century. Railroads remained the backbone of national transporta- tion systems for a century. Likewise, fiber will remain the backbone of the global telecommunication network, although individual companies will come and go. I have taken advantage of this new edition to correct mistakes and omissions in the first. I owe particular thanks to Bob Maurer, Don Keck, and Bill Wolf for their comments and reflections. The part of the epilogue covering optical amplifiers is based in part on my article ‘‘The evolution of optical amplifiers,’’ in the August 2002 issue of Optics & Photonics News. I think Lisa Rosenthal for commissioning the article, and Dave Payne, Emmanuel Desurvire, and Larry Johnson for helping with my research on optical amplifiers. Preface When I started to explore the history of fiber optics, I had no idea the origins of what seemed such a young technology dated back more than a century and a half. Yet the more I dug, the farther the roots stretched, back in time, around the world, and across disciplines. I found forgotten heroes, discovered mistakes in the sketchy standard histories, and tried to untangle a few lin- gering mysteries. I learned how a powerful new technology evolved to fill the needs of our society. The basic concept behind fiber optics began as a thing of beauty, but Vic- torian scientists saw it as little more than a parlor trick to play with light. Over the decades, others borrowed the idea, inventing and re-inventing ways to guide light. The trickle of innovation reached a critical mass in the 1950s, and the young technology slowly emerged into the world. More advances followed, including a series of breakthroughs that in twenty years transformed a crazy idea into the backbone of the global telecommunications network. My job here is to tell the story of fiber optics. If I were writing a novel, my hero might make an elegant invention in her basement, struggle for years to perfect and market the idea, and ultimately become the multibillionaire head of an industrial empire. Modern technology doesn’t work like that, making the tale both more complex and more fascinating. No one genius did it all. It took a cast of thousands to develop the essential pieces and assemble them into working systems. Think of it as a city of light, a still-growing community building a structure elegant in concept and useful in function. I’ve had the good fortune to spend many years watching and writing about that richly textured place. It’s full of struggles and successes, x PREFACE bright and beautiful ideas, and fireside tales told relaxing with old friends. I have tried to fill this book with that spirit. I owe many people thanks for making this book possible. A generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation gave me the time and resources for the job. Art Singer of the Sloan Foundation supplied help and encouragement well beyond the financial support. Victor McElheny generously helped me with my proposal; he and John Armstrong gave thoughtful feedback on my manuscript. My Oxford editor, Kirk Jensen, patiently guided me to tell the story and explain the technology clearly. Thanks also to my agent, Jeanne Hanson, and to Helen Gavaghan for telling me about the Sloan program. The story of the origins of light guiding draws heavily on careful research by the late Kaye Weedon, who found the earliest accounts of demonstrations by Daniel Colladon and Jacques Babinet.