Feature
Interview with Donald Keck:The of Fiber Optics (OPN Trends Supplement)
By the 1960s, it had become clear that the copper wires that carried all telephone traffic were not going to be able to handle increasing demand forever. A few years before Keck’s whoopee moment, Charles K. Kao, a researcher at Standard Telecommunications Laboratory in England, had determined that for optical communications to be practical, the fiber had to lose light at no more than 20 decibels per kilometer. To achieve this result, various labs were working on making glass fiber that was optically pure.
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