Who invented fiber optics?

 

1840s: Swiss physicist Daniel Colladon (1802–1893) discovered he could shine light along a water pipe. The water carried the light by internal reflection.
 

1870: An Irish physicist called John Tyndall (1820–1893) demonstrated internal reflection at London's Royal Society. He shone light into a jug of water. When he poured some of the water out from the jug, the light curved round following the water's path. This idea of "bending light" is exactly what happens in fiber optics. Although Colladon is the true grandfather of fiber-optics, Tyndall often earns the credit.
 

1930s: Heinrich Lamm and Walter Gerlach, two German students, tried to use light pipes to make a gastroscope—an instrument for looking inside someone's stomach.
 

1950s: In London, England, Indian physicist Narinder Kapany (1927–) and British physicist Harold Hopkins (1918–1994) managed to send a simple picture down a light pipe made from thousands of glass fibers. After publishing many scientific papers, Kapany earned a reputation as the "father of fiber optics."
 

1957: Three American scientists at the University of Michigan, Lawrence Curtiss, Basil Hirschowitz, and Wilbur Peters, successfully used fiber-optic technology to make the world's first gastroscope.
 

1960s: Chinese-born US physicist Charles Kao (1933–) and his colleague George Hockham realized that impure glass was no use for long-range fiber optics. Kao suggested that a fiber-optic cable made from very pure glass would be able to carry telephone signals over much longer distances and was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for this ground-breaking discovery.
 

1960s: Researchers at the Corning Glass Company made the first fiber-optic cable capable of carrying telephone signals.
 

1977: The first fiber-optic telephone cable was laid between Long Beach and Artesia, California.
 

1997: A huge transatlantic fiber-optic telephone cable called FLAG (Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe) was laid between London, England and Tokyo, Japan.