J.R. Johnson

Today’s post is brought to you by fiber optic cable, the innovation currently being inserted into my lawn.

In a discussion about grass vs. clover lawns today, I mentioned that our neighborhood is being wired for fiber internet. For weeks, we’ve had orange-vested dudes (and they’re all dudes) roaming in packs, hauling giant spools of multi-colored cables, digging up driveways and yards (and reseeding with industrial-strength grass seed), and generally doing their best to drag our 1990s development into the modern era.

Now we’ve got cable ends sticking up everywhere, a new panel in the grass looking like a secret bunker entrance, and neighbors wondering whether all this fuss is worth it. 

It also led to the question, how do fiber optics work, exactly?

Answer: I have a layman’s understanding of the technology (data becomes light and zoom zooms down a shiny glass tube) but yeah, better look that up:)

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Here’s a quick backgrounder about fiber optics from the folks who invented it.

Educational Resources | Optical Fiber | Optical Communications | Corning

Corning scientists Dr. Robert Maurer, Dr. Peter Schultz, and Dr. Donald Keck invented the first low-loss optical fiber in 1970. Inspired by their belief that information could be transmitted through light, Drs. Maurer, Schultz, and Keck spent four years experimenting with different properties of glass until they succeeded, creating the first low-loss optical fiber for telecommunications use.

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How does it work?

Encoded into a pattern of light waves, information travels through each optical fiber by a process of internal reflection. The waves move through the fiber from a given source to a destination such as a cable box where it is then decoded.

(So is it a little like a super sophisticated version of an Aldis signal lamp? I guess that’s one way to think about it.)

For more (and more scientific) details, check out this excellent video:

And just for fun, how do they connect North America to Africa to Asia, and everywhere else?

• Submarine Cable FAQs
• Interactive Submarine Cable Map

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