Optical Fibers and Optical Fiber Assemblies

Saini, Devinder, Fiberguide Industries, Inc.; Farley, Kevin F., Fiberguide Industries, Inc.; Westlund, Brian, Fiberguide Industries, Inc.

doi:10.1117/3.2599940.ch8

Book: Review of Optical Manufacturing 2000 to 2020

Editor(s): Aizhong Zhang; Richard N. Youngworth

Author(s): Devinder Saini, Kevin Farley, Brian Westlund

Published: 2021

https://doi.org/10.1117/3.2599940.ch8

Author Affiliations +

Abstract

The guiding of light in various materials (glass and water) using the principle of refraction has been demonstrated throughout history, in fact this phenomenon was known in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia where colored glass was used for decoration. In the late 19th and 20th century, various pioneers demonstrated the use of bent glass rods to illuminate cavities in the body and for early form of television. The bare glass fibers/rods that were used in these experiments were, however, very lossy which meant that they did not transmit a lot of light. The loss of light in these fibers was due to light escaping when these fibers touched each other or when they had scratches on the surface. These issues were solved during the 1950s when the idea of cladding a fiber was demonstrated by Bram van Heel, and in the same year N. S. Kapany and H. Hopkins demonstrated image transmission in a bundle of 10,000 fibers 75 cm long. The theory of light propagation into fibers was described by N.S. Kapany and improved later by E. Snitzer. The theory of the use of optical fiber for communication was developed and promoted by C. K. Kao and G. A. Hockham in 1965.