SCIENCE AND A SYMPHONY - Artistic Laser Light Show With an Orchestral Performance of “Oscillate”

Over 200 central Texas science teachers and other educators were invited guests at a March 20 multimedia concert by the Waco Symphony Orchestra. The event was one of many LaserFest celebrations being held this year throughout the country to commemorate the 50th year of the laser, which was invented in 1960. The purpose of the LaserFest celebrations is to call attention to the many ways that lasers have enhanced our daily lives—from laser printers and copiers to digital sound reproduction and fiber optics, to mention only a few of the applications that are now commonplace.
The WSO concert featured a new composition by Jon Barrett, a Baylor University graduate student. The composition, titled “Oscillate,” was performed in conjunction with a specially designed laser light show.
Barrett’s piece was a natural match for a laser light show. Barrett composed it as a musical reflection of what he called the “never-ending ballet of patterns, interconnected and interdependent with one another, large and small.” “Our cells are born from our parents’ cells,” he noted, “and through division give rise to more cells until finally dying. Our lungs respire through a pattern of inhalation and exhalation. Our heart pumps blood through our bodies, circulating oxygen to our cells. Electrical charges constantly course throughout our nervous systems, giving us control of our bodies and a sense of the world and, ultimately, the Cosmos.” “Oscillate,” which won Baylor’s 2009 Symphony Overture Competition, is also a study in the juxtaposition of opposites—loud and soft, high and low, light and dark, fast and slow, transparent and opaque textures, serious and comical tones, and art and popular musical styles.

The laser light show, which was custom-designed as a visual interpretation of Barrett’s music, was provided by Prismatic Magic, a nationally known laser light show company. Prismatic Magic’s president, Dr. Chris Volpe, is a physicist with a specialization in optics and lasers.

Prior to the concert, OP-TEC, Texas State Technical College, Baylor University, and the City of Waco jointly hosted the guest teachers at a reception in Baylor’s new science building.


Over 100 pictures of the laser light show, as well as a 10-minute audio-video recording of the performance, can be seen on the OP-TEC website, www.op-tec.org/lasershow.

Recent Trends in Solid State (LED) Lighting

The acceptance of Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs) as the preferred lighting device continues to grow in all sectors throughout our country, but especially in municipalities. U.S. cities are seizing upon LEDS as a viable strategy to “Go Green”, particularly in applications where low maintenance is more important than lower initial costs.

According to an article entitled “U.S. Cities Go Green with LEDs”, in the Optical Society of America’s (OSA) February issue of Optics and Photonics News (OPN), cities as well as public and commercial institutions are demonstrating the use of LEDs to realize long term cost savings and reduce pollution in the operation of traffic lights and street lighting. Although LED’s are still more expensive than fluorescent lights, their initial costs are offset by their higher efficiencies and longer lifetimes. Maintenance costs to replace failed lighting are very expensive in street lighting and traffic lights. And LED’s don’t usually “fail suddenly”, like incandescent and fluorescents. When they begin to fail their light production usually drops about one-third, which means that there is more time to schedule and coordinate repairs.

James Brodrick, manager of the DOE’s solid state lighting program, claims that the use of high efficiency LEDs could reduce U.S. energy consumption for lighting by over 30% in two decades, which would eliminate the need for 44 power plants generating 1000 megawatts each, and cut the equivalent of 47 million automobiles’ greenhouse emission. LEDs are also more efficient in outdoor lighting because they are more directional and can be applied where they are needed. The clean, uniform lighting provided by LEDs also improves visibility.

All new traffic signals now use LEDs, which provide a cost savings of approximately $48/year, due to reduced maintenance and the fact that LEDs produce the desired colors, rather than having a broad band source that has to be filtered, like fluorescents and incandescents.

The DOE is encouraging the use of LEDs by funding municipalities and educational institutions for demonstration and test sites. (Visit http://www.ssl.energy.gov/ for more information.) The OPN article, cited above, describes several successful examples of DOE-funded initiatives.

LED use is also growing in home use, particularly in outdoor lighting. But the cost and reluctance to switch to a somewhat different lighting effect have delayed widespread use like municipalities have experienced. “The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which set efficiency standards for light bulbs, is also helping to promote LED use. Traditional incandescent bulbs do not meet the standards that go into effect in 2012”, Brodrick said. “By 2020, advanced incandescents will fall below the standards as well. Only CFLs and LEDs are likely to meet the 2020 standards.

OP-TEC continues to follow LED technology advances in lighting, in order to anticipate the need for new technicians in this field. So far most of the production and installation jobs appear to be at

the craft level.

Questions or comments? Please contact us!

Click here to read the full OPN article, "U.S. Cities Go Green with LEDs."

Click here to visit the DOE's Solid State Lighting website.

2010 Update on Photonics for Optical Communications - Photonics is the Key to Broadband Access

Background
Early use of the Internet depended on “dial-up access” using telephone lines, which was limited to a bit rate less than 56 kbit/second. This allowed computers to “talk to each other” and exchange and access text information. But shortly, computers were developed that could process information faster; higher-speed transmission lines were needed.

In the 1990’s broadband Internet access, using co-ax cable and twisted pair wires, expanded the bit rate up to 256 kbit/second, and served the business community well by speeding up transmission times and enabling higher data rates and larger data files, like pictures and video transmission.

To expand the use of the Internet to more users, and to allow rapid transmission over longer (intercontinental) distances, fiber optics cabling has been installed for transoceanic Internet cables, across large land distances and in urban areas where business use is very dense. The use of fiber optics means that we are transmitting information over optical (laser diode) beams where the carrier frequencies are many orders of magnitude greater than the radio frequencies sent over copper wire. Over the last decade, the use of laser transmitters, optical receivers and fiber optics transmission cables ushered in photonics technology to enhance Internet and telecommunications services.

Cell phones required wireless transmission over radio and microwave frequencies. Their wide-spread use required transmission towers positioned every 10-50 miles apart throughout the land; the cell phone towers “talked to each other” around the world by connecting through synchronous, orbiting satellites. Computers also began communicating “wirelessly” by tying into the communication towers and satellites.

Digital Communications has become more complex and more crowded: We’re outgrowing our infrastructure
Smart phones (such as iPhones and BlackBerries) combine cell phones with computer access to the Internet, requiring broadband access. Today, according to the International Telecommunications Union, 60 out of every 100 people in the world own and/or are using cell phones and smart phones; and more than 85 percent of the world’s online population has used the Internet to make a purchase.

Over the last 3 years, the surge of computer and smart phone use for social networking (e.g. Facebook and Twitter), as well as video streaming and video conferencing, has placed an enormous demand on broadband access that can only be met by greatly increasing the bit rates to 1-10 megabit/second. This can be accomplished by changing our entire digital infrastructure for distance transmission as well as local area networks (LANs).

Note: Distance transmission provides Internet service to a building or communication tower, and LANs distributes the Internet service to users within the facility. In a home or small office LANs are relatively simple, but still must be fast. In large corporations, college/universities, and Internet businesses, such as Google, LANs support the use of huge megaservers.

Photonics technologies will provide the tools and techniques to reconfigure our digital infrastructure
Fiber optics networks, carrying optical signals generated by laser diodes, are the technology tools that will allow us to reconfigure the digital network. In 2009, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) defined "Basic Broadband" as data transmission speeds exceeding 768 kilobits per second (Kbps), in at least one direction: downstream (from the Internet to the user’s computer) or upstream (from the user’s computer to the Internet). The trend is to raise the threshold of the broadband definition as the marketplace rolls out faster services. Broadband penetration is now treated as a key economic indicator.

As the bandwidth delivered to end users increases, the market expects that video on-demand services streamed over the Internet will become more popular, though at the present time such services generally require specialized networks. The data rates on most broadband services still do not suffice to provide good quality video, as MPEG-2 video requires about 6 Mbit/s for good results. Adequate video for some purposes becomes possible at lower data rates, with rates of 768 kbit/s and 384 kbit/s used for some video conferencing applications, and rates as low as 100 kbit/s used for videophones using H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. The MPEG-4 format delivers high-quality video at 2 Mbit/s, at the low end of cable modem performance.

Technology applications change the landscape
Because of falling costs to acquire the equipment, businesses may have dozens or even hundreds of video cameras on their premises, carrying video on the LAN. The combination of lower prices and technology advancements enhances security and enables fewer people to keep track of assets that may be scattered far and wide.

Telepresence, the latest generation of video conferencing that uses large flat screens and high-definition video to replicate face-to-face meetings, is gaining traction.

As these trends grow, new bandwidth-hungry applications appear. Enterprise bandwidth demand escalates month after month and requires upgrades in electronic apparatus and larger copper cables. Information technology (IT) managers scratch their heads wondering how to accommodate these requirements. It won’t be done with copper. We need massive shifts to fiber delivery systems, using laser diode transmitters and other photonics components, especially in outlying rural areas.

Verizon Conducts World's First 10 Gigabit-per-Second Fiber-to-the-Premises Field Test Waltham, Mass. – December 16, 2009
Last month, Verizon became the first telecommunications company in the world to successfully field-test a passive optical network system known as XG-PON that can transmit data at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) downstream and 2.4 Gbps upstream, four times as fast as the current top transmission speeds supporting the company's all-fiber FiOS network. Additional demonstrations of this nature are expected by Verizon and other companies in early 2010.

Photonics is the key to the future in broadband access
A few weeks ago, the Federal government announced that it will hand out the first $182 million of a $7.2 billion pot of stimulus money that will go toward building high-speed Internet networks and encouraging more Americans to use them.

The money is being targeted for "last-mile" connections that link homes, businesses and other end users to the Internet; "middle-mile" connections that link communities to the Internet backbone; computing centers in libraries, colleges and other public facilities; and adoption programs that teach people how to use the Internet and encourage them to sign up for broadband services. By March 2010, additional stimulus funds will be released to build our country’s broadband access.

The need is evident, the technology has been proven and stimulus funds are being applied. It is quite possible - even likely - that 2010 will be the year of massive development for broadband infrastructure. And photonics components will pave the way.

What’s your perspective on this? Am I too optimistic? Have I understated the case? Will U.S. photonics suppliers be the main beneficiaries in this market? Are we ready? Will we need even more photonics techs? How about retraining needs?

Leave your comments here or contact me by e-mail!

Photonics Colleges Receive “High School Pipeline” Grants

Many colleges that offer educational programs in emerging technical fields are making innovative changes in their curricula and student recruiting strategies. Their goal is to increase the number of students who enroll in and complete their programs, and to make their curriculum content more relevant to changes in employer requirements for technicians. This is especially true for colleges with photonics programs.

• Photonics specialties are being designed to build on a “systems-oriented” technical core that is capable of supporting related technologies such as robotics, telecommunication, microelectronics, and biomedical equipment. These revitalized programs have a broader student appeal than more narrowly focused programs because they prepare students to pursue interesting, rewarding careers in multiple advanced technologies.


• Targeted recruiting efforts to build the “high school pipeline” have been created using cost-effective strategies designed to inform teachers and students about career opportunities in photonics and related fields and the requirements for entering and succeeding in postsecondary photonics education programs. In many cases, students can begin those programs while they are still in high school through dual-credit courses.

In the last three years, several of OP-TEC’s Partner Colleges have incorporated both of these strategies - resulting in an impressive 15-50% increase in student enrollment over the last two years. The colleges have documented their methodologies and achievements in monographs that have become models for photonics program improvement. Other photonics colleges have begun to adopt these “best practices,” hoping to realize similar improvements.

Two colleges that are rebuilding their photonics technician programs in an impressive manner are Central New Mexico Community College (CNMCC) and Monroe Community College (MCC). Over the last several years the well-established optics and photonics programs at these institutions have experienced severe declines in enrollment due to faculty retirement and an obvious need to update their curricula and labs. Early this year, these two colleges, with new faculty and significant support from regional photonics employer clusters, engaged in program improvement initiatives that resulted in a redesigned curriculum core that supports OP-TEC photonics infusion courses. The colleges have also engaged in partnerships with nearby high schools to develop dual-credit courses in photonics.

This week OP-TEC will award $15,000 matching grants to each college to increase its enrollment through “high school pipeline” efforts.

• CNMCC will use its grant to hire a dedicated high school recruiter who will meet with students, parents, and teachers at nearby high schools to inform them of career opportunities for photonics technicians and opportunities to enroll in CNMCC’s photonics program, even while still in high school. This effort is patterned after the model developed by Indian River State College. The New Mexico Optics Industry Association is sponsoring high school dual-credit photonics courses in an effort to jump-start the process. In the summer of 2010, CNMCC will also conduct two week-long “boot camps” for secondary students who are interested in photonics, using the model developed by the Northpointe two-year campus of Indiana University of Pennsylvania (an OP-TEC Partner College).

• MCC will use its grant to fund two four-day training programs for high school science and math teachers that will take place in the summer of 2010. The teachers will be introduced to a variety of fundamental concepts pertinent to optics and photonics. They will also participate in lab experiments that apply the concepts. The objective is for the teachers to be able to replicate those experiments in their classrooms. Through the OP-TEC grant, MCC will provide supplies for the labs of the participating high school teachers. MCC is supporting the high school outreach efforts through the NY/Rochester Photonics Industry Cluster and several high school intermediary organizations.

Increasing the number of completers of postsecondary photonics technician programs is vital to the security and economic competitiveness of our country. The demand for photonics technicians by our nation’s employers far exceeds the supply currently being produced by our colleges. Early this year, OP-TEC commissioned a national study by the University of North Texas (UNT) to determine the number of new photonics technicians needed by U.S. employers. The study concluded that 2100 new photonics technicians will be needed in 2010 and that 5900 more will be needed over the next five years. Last year, OP-TEC surveyed U.S. two-year colleges to assess our nation’s ability to produce new technicians. The results of this survey showed that the U.S. has 28 photonics colleges with a combined enrollment of 780 photonics students and about 230 completers each year. Obviously, the gap between supply and demand - 2100 needed versus 230 supplied - is large. OP-TEC is attempting to close this gap in three ways:

• Starting new photonics education programs (Three colleges began offering photonics for the first time this fall.)
• Increasing student enrollment in and completion of existing photonics education programs through the “HS pipeline” initiative
• Helping colleges provide photonics education for employed technicians

For more information about the OP-TEC/UNT study, or to download the report, please visit http://www.op-tec.org/2009survey.

Laser and Optics Applications Modules

The applications of lasers, optics and fiber optics in energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, medicine, defense, environmental control and consumer products have expanded enormously in the last decade - and new applications (such as displays and solid-state lighting) are emerging daily. For this reason, Photonics (lasers, optics and fiber optics) is regarded as a critical “enabling technology”. And because of this role, the need for new photonics technicians has grown to an annual rate of more than 2,100 jobs in 2009. (OP-TEC Industry Survey)

Some of these jobs are being filled by recent graduates of the 30+ photonics colleges in the U.S. Others are being filled by the infusion of photonics education/training in these photonics-enabled fields. Some colleges that offer technician programs in these other fields are adding photonics education to their existing curricula. Others are restructuring their technical curricula into an “electronics systems core” with specialties in emerging fields like photonics. And many colleges are beginning to offer photonics courses to employed technicians that have been reassigned to jobs using photonics equipment and processes.

OP-TEC has responded to these educational needs in photonics by creating flexible curriculum and teaching modules that can be used to adapt programs and courses to the variety of education and training requirements needed by industry. These modules are configured in two categories:

Two Foundation Courses in Photonics: “The Basics”

• Fundamentals of Light and Lasers (six modules)
• Elements of Photonics (six modules)

Nineteen Application Modules in Lasers, Optics, Electro-Optics and Fiber Optics: "The Photonics Enabled Technologies (PET)"

Applications in Manufacturing:

• Laser Welding & Surface Treatment
• Laser Material Removal: Drilling, Cutting & Marking
• Lasers in Testing & Measurement: Alignment, Profiling and Position Sensing
• Lasers in Testing: Interferometric Methods and Nondestructive Testing

Applications in Defense and Homeland Security:

• Lasers in Forensic Science & Homeland Security
• Infrared Systems for Homeland Security
• Imaging System Performance for Homeland Security Applications

Applications in Biomedicine:

• Lasers in Medicine & Surgery
• Therapeutic Applications of Lasers
• Diagnostic Applications of Lasers

Applications in Environmental Monitoring:

• Basics of Spectroscopy
• Spectroscopy & Remote Sensing
• Spectroscopy & Pollution Monitoring

Applications in Optoelectronics:

• Photonics in Nanotechnology
• Photonic Principles in Photovoltaic Cell Technology
• Photonics in Nanotechnology Measurements: A Study of Atomic Force Microscopy

Other Applications:

• Principles of Optical Fiber Communications
• Photonic Devices for Imaging, Storage & Display
• Basic Principles & Applications of Holography

These modules, based on The National Photonics Skill Standards for Technicians, have been reviewed by industry experts and tested in classes/labs. They are being used in a variety of technical education curricula to support the photonics content needed in areas that are enabled by photonics. They will also be used by faculty and others to learn about these new applications of photonics in their particular field of interest.

OP-TEC will continue to add to these PET modules as the needs arise. In 2010, we will be focusing on energy and solid state lighting applications.

For more information about OP-TEC’s PET modules or to obtain review copies, please click here to visit our website. If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail us at op-tec@op-tec.org.

What would life be like without lasers? Part C - Using Lasers to Burn and Read CDs and DVDs

CDs and DVDs are everywhere these days. Whether they are used to hold music, data or computer software, they have become the standard medium for distributing large quantities of information in a reliable package. Compact discs are now easy and cheap to produce. If you have a computer and CD-R drive, you can create your own CDs, including any information you want.

The Disc
A CD is a fairly simple piece of plastic, about four one-hundredths (4/100) of an inch (1.2 mm) thick. Most of a CD consists of a piece of clear polycarbonate plastic, shaped like a disc. During manufacture, this plastic is impressed with microscopic bumps arranged as a single, continuous, extremely long spiral track of data. Once the clear piece of polycarbonate is formed, a thin, reflective aluminum layer is sputtered onto the disc, covering the bumps. Then a thin acrylic layer is sprayed over the aluminum to protect it. The label is then printed onto the acrylic. A cross section of a complete CD looks like this: The Spiral
A CD has a single spiral track of data, circling from the inside of the disc to the outside. What the picture on the right does not even begin to impress upon you is how incredibly small the data track is -- it is approximately 0.5 microns wide, with 1.6 microns separating one track from the next. (A micron is a millionth of a meter.) And the bumps are even more miniscule...

The Bumps
The elongated bumps that make up the track are each 0.5 microns wide, a minimum of 0.83 microns long and 125 nanometers high. (A nanometer is a billionth of a meter.) Looking through the polycarbonate layer at the bumps, they look something like this:The bumps are arranged in a spiral path, starting at the center of the disc. The CD player spins the disc while the laser assembly moves outward from the center of the CD.

CD Player Components
The CD player has the job of finding and reading the data stored as bumps on the CD. Considering how small the bumps are, the CD player is an exceptionally precise piece of equipment. The drive consists of three fundamental components:

• A drive motor spins the disc.
• A laser and a lens system focus in on and read the bumps.
• A tracking mechanism moves the laser assembly so that the laser's beam can follow the spiral track.

You will often read about "pits" on a CD instead of bumps. They appear as pits on the aluminum side, but on the side the laser reads from, they are bumps.

The incredibly small dimensions of the bumps make the spiral track on a CD extremely long. If you could lift the data track off a CD and stretch it out into a straight line, it would be 0.5 microns wide and almost 3.5 miles (5 km) long! To read something this small you need an incredibly precise disc-reading mechanism. The key element in this mechanism is the pinpoint beam of a laser.

The fundamental job of the CD player is to focus the laser on the track of bumps. The laser beam passes through the polycarbonate layer, reflects off the aluminum layer and hits an opto-electronic device that detects changes in light. The bumps reflect light differently than the "lands" (the rest of the aluminum layer), and the opto-electronic sensor detects that change in reflectivity. The electronics in the drive interpret the changes in reflectivity in order to read the bits that make up the bytes.

The hardest part is keeping the laser beam centered on the data track. This centering is the job of the tracking system. The tracking system, as it plays the CD, has to continually move the laser outward. As the laser moves outward from the center of the disc, the bumps move past the laser faster. Therefore, as the laser moves outward, the spindle motor must slow the speed of the CD. That way, the bumps travel past the laser at a constant speed, and the data comes off the disc at a constant rate.

CDs store music and other files in digital form -- that is, the information on the disc is represented by a series of 1s and 0s. In conventional CDs, these 1s and 0s are represented by millions of tiny bumps and flat areas on the disc's reflective surface.

To read this information, the CD player passes a laser beam over the track. When the laser passes over a flat area in the track, the beam is reflected directly to an optical sensor on the laser assembly. The CD player interprets this as a 1. When the beam passes over a bump, the light is bounced away from the optical sensor. The CD player recognizes this as a 0.

The advent of CD burners marked a huge cultural shift. The technology made it feasible for the average person to gather songs and make their own CDs. Today, writable CD drives (CD burners) are standard equipment in new PCs, and more and more audio enthusiasts are adding separate CD burners to their stereo systems.

CD burners darken microscopic areas of CD-R discs to record a digital pattern of reflective and non-reflective areas that can be read by a standard CD player. Since the data must be accurately encoded on such a small scale, the burning system must be extremely precise.

In addition to the standard read laser, a CD burner has a write laser. The write laser is more powerful than the read laser, so it interacts with the disc differently: It alters the surface instead of just bouncing light off it. Read lasers are not intense enough to darken the dye material, so simply playing a CD-R in a CD drive will not destroy any encoded information.

Questions or comments? E-mail us!

References:

Brain, Marshall. "How CDs Work." 01 April 2000. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cd.htm> 02 November 2009.

Harris, Tom. "How CD Burners Work." 01 August 2001. HowStuffWorks.com. <http://computer.howstuffworks.com/cd-burner.htm> 02 November 2009.

What would life be like without lasers? Part B - Lasers and Fiber Optics in High-Speed Internet & Smart Phones

The Internet, fax machines, smart phones, and other mobile devices are a way of life in modern society. All these technologies rely on lasers and fiber optics.

The properties of laser beams that allow them to be excellent carriers of high-data-rate signals (like high-speed Internet) are: 1) they are extremely high-frequency (0.3 GHz) carriers; and, 2) they have the coherence properties of radio or microwave radiation. These properties allow laser beams to carry many concurrent high-frequency signals.

Laser beams travel through the air in straight lines except when they are bent by lenses or prisms or reflected by mirrors. Optical fibers permit the transmission, or “piping,” of laser beams in flexible cables that can be wrapped around corners or laid on the ocean floor. An optical fiber is a fine glass or plastic strand that carries light internally along its length. Fiber-optic cables, which consist of bundles of optical fibers, are used to transmit laser beams in high-data-rate (high-bandwidth) optical communication. Optical fibers prevent the laser signals from being blocked or scattered by clouds or other particles in the atmosphere or by electromagnetic interference. This means that laser beams can travel over long distances without significant distortion or attenuation.

Fiber-optic cables can support Internet systems with up to 3 trillion bits per second at transfer rates as high as 111 gigabits per second (Gb/s), although 10 or 40 Gb/s is typical. The fibers used in long-distance telecommunication applications are always glass because glass causes only minimal attenuation. Both multi-mode and single-mode fibers are used, with multi-mode fiber used mostly for short distances (up to 600 yards) and single-mode fiber used for longer distances.

The process of communicating using fiber optics involves five basic steps: Creating the optical signal by modulating the laser output beam, relaying the modulated laser signal along the fiber, ensuring that the signal does not become too distorted or weak, receiving the optical signal, and converting the signal into an electrical signal.

Optical fibers are widely used to transmit telephone signals, Internet communication, and cable television signals. Due to much lower attenuation and interference, optical fiber has significant advantages over electrical transmission in long-distance and high-demand applications. Because of these advantages, optical fibers have largely replaced copper wire in core communication networks in the developed world. For example, many landline cell tower connections are made over optical fiber.

As one of the most talked about technological breakthroughs of the last few decades, laser/fiber-optic Internet carries a big name and responsibility in today’s world. Through the use of lasers and fiber optics, the computer and the Internet have evolved into realities that not too long ago were considered purely imaginary. Computers that used to take up entire rooms can now fit in a person’s back pocket. The Internet, which was created to help secure U.S. military networks, has now united the world with information.

With lasers and fiber optics, the frustrating days of slow Internet connections are forever in the past. Some people argue that wireless Internet is still faster than fiber-optic Internet, but that is not true. Laser/fiber-optic Internet is nearly a million times faster than wireless. A fiber-optic Internet cable can carry up to around three trillion bits per second. At that rate, the Library of Congress could be downloaded to your computer within a minute, compared to about eighty years for a dial-up connection (Fiberoptics VP).

The first transatlantic fiber-optic cable was installed in 1988, using glass fibers so transparent that repeaters (to regenerate and recondition the signal) were needed only about every 40 miles. In 1997, the Fiber Optics Link Around the World (FLAG) became the longest single-cable network in the world, providing infrastructure for the next-generation Internet. The 17,500-mile cable begins in England and runs through the Strait of Gibraltar to Palermo, Sicily, before crossing the Mediterranean to Egypt. It then goes to Dubai and UAR before crossing the Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal, and Andaman Sea, through Thailand, and across the China Sea to Hong Kong and Japan (National Academy of Engineering).

Transistors get a lot of attention in the digital world, but the backstage heroes are lasers. Red lasers brought us compact discs and cheap long-distance communication. Blue lasers, which cram even more data into a small spot, became a hit around 1999 and have made possible Blu-ray DVDs (Elizabeth Corcoran, Forbes Magazine, June 08, 2009).

Gordon Snyder, Director of the NSF/ATE ICT Center, says, “The entire landline infrastructure is being replaced with fiber.” More valuable comments about this from Gordon can be found at the following blogspots:
http://ictcenter.blogspot.com/2009/09/why-verizon-is-sunsetting-public.html
http://ictcenter.blogspot.com/2009/09/verizon-no-longer-concerned-with-tele.html

Questions or comments? Post your comments here or e-mail me!