fiber-optic cable

electric conductor

Learn about this topic in these articles:

telecommunications

  • cutaway drawings of multipair and coaxial cables
    In cable: Fibre-optic telecommunication cables

    Cables made of optical fibres first came into operation in the mid-1970s. In a fibre-optic cable, light signals are transmitted through thin fibres of plastic or glass from light-emitting diodes or semiconductor lasers by means of internal reflection. The advantages of fibre-optic…

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  • Alexander Graham Bell and the New York City–Chicago telephone link
    In telephone: Optical-fibre cable

    …progress in the development of fibre optics, permitting transmission at ever higher data rates. Several different technologies have been essential in this development: so-called nonzero-dispersion optical fibres, which permit the transmission of multiple wavelengths of light at high data rates; erbium-doped fibre amplifiers, which use a laser pump source to…

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  • radio wave dish-type antennas
    In telecommunications media: Applications of wire

    …1987 of the first transatlantic fibre-optic cable (TAT-8), which could carry some 40,000 circuits, the coaxial cables were gradually phased out of service, with TAT-6 and TAT-7 being retired in 1994.

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work of Kao

  • In Charles Kao

    can be transmitted through fibre-optic cables. He shared the prize with physicists Willard Boyle and George E. Smith, who won for their work in inventing the charge-coupled device (CCD). Kao held dual citizenship in Great Britain and the United States.

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