Our Heritage
Today, we take for granted our "connectivity" - that is, our ability to seamlessly connect to the world and access information on virtually any subject, at any time, nearly any place. But in 1970, when Corning Incorporated scientists Drs. Robert Maurer, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz invented the first low-loss optical fiber, they could not have foreseen how dramatically it would revolutionize the telecommunications industry. Their breakthrough discovery paved the way for the commercialization of optical fiber communication by transmitting 17 decibels of light per kilometer of fiber. Today, that number is 0.17 db/km for Corning's suite of ultra-low loss fibers - 100 times better performance than the first low-loss fiber. More than 1.4 billion kilometers of fiber have been installed around the world. We've come a long way.
The evolution of fiber over the past 40 years is a story unlike any other, and Corning has been at the forefront of every major innovation in this revolutionary transmission medium. It all started in the mid-1960s, when it became clear to Corning researchers, and to the communications industry as a whole, that the existing copper wire infrastructure used to transfer data and voice would not have enough bandwidth for the impending increase in traffic.
A new solution was needed, and Corning believed that optical fiber was the key. Backed by the company's investment of "patient money," Maurer, Keck, and Schultz employed innovative problem-solving strategies and outsmarted the competition in the race to develop the first low-loss optical fiber. After four years of trial and error, experimentation, and learning, they unveiled a unique manufacturing process for an ultra-pure, hair-thin glass fiber that transmitted light signals with low attenuation, or signal loss.
The story obviously didn't end there. An amazing, unplanned confluence of technological breakthroughs in the early 1970s fueled the rapid acceptance of optical fiber - the semiconductor laser, the microprocessor, and the initial "vision" of a global communications network. In the early 1980s, optical fiber was being installed primarily by telephone companies. Ten years later, the fiber revolution was substantially reshaping the way the world communicated. All the while, Corning continued to create and improve manufacturing processes, design long-haul technology, and enhance and modify its optical fiber as the technology in this dynamic industry matured.
And then came the Internet. The demand for bandwidth capable of transmitting voice, data, and video at high speeds absolutely exploded. As a result, the never-ending pursuit of faster, better, and cheaper communication requires researchers to continually work to improve capacity and connectivity on a global scale. In keeping with its 40-year legacy as the world leader in optical fiber, Corning will continue to set the industry standards and remain at the forefront of future technological breakthroughs.
Read a feature on one of the inventors of optical fiber, Don Keck