InventorsFiber
Optics Featured
Story: The
Birth of Fiber Optics Fiber optics and the use of light
to communicate.
The Inventors
of Glass Fiber Optics at the US Army Signal Corp The following information was submitted
by Richard Sturzebecher, it was originally published in the Army Corp publication
"Monmouth Message."
In 1958, at the US Army Signal Corps
Labs in Fort Monmouth New Jersey, the Manager of Copper Cable and Wire
hated the signal transmission problems caused by lightening and water.
He encouraged the Manager of Materials Research, Sam DiVita, to find a
replacement for copper wire. Sam thought glass fiber and light signals
might work, but the engineers who worked for Sam told him a glass fiber
would break! In September 1959, Sam DiVita asked 2nd Lt. Richard Sturzebecher
if he knew how to write the formula for a glass fiber capable of transmitting
light signals. (Sam had learned that Richard, who was attending the Signal
School, had melted 3 triaxial glass systems, using SiO2, for his
1958 senior thesis at Alfred University under Dr. Harold Simpson, Professor
of Glass Technology.)
Richard knew the answer. While using
a microscope to measuring the index-of-refraction on SiO2 glasses, Richard
developed a severe headache. The 60% and 70% SiO2 glass powders under the
microscope allowed higher and higher amounts of brilliant, white light
to pass through the microscope slide into his eyes. Remembering the headache
and the brilliant white light from high SiO2 glass, Richard knew that the
formula would be ultra pure SiO2. Richard also knew that Corning made high
purity SiO2 powder, by oxidizing pure SiCl4 into SiO2. He suggested that
Sam use his power to award a Federal Contract to Corning to develop the
fiber.
Sam DiVita had already worked with
Corning research people. But he had to make the idea public, because all
research laboratories had a right to bid on a Federal contract. So, in
1961 and 1962, the idea of using high purity SiO2 for a glass fiber to
transmit light was made public information in a bid solicitation to all
research laboratories. As expected, Sam awarded the contract to the Corning
Glass Works in Corning, New York in 1962. Federal funding for glass fiber
optics at Corning was about $1,000,000 between 1963 and 1970. Signal Corps
Federal funding of many research programs on fiber optics until 1985, thereby
seeding this industry and making today's multibillion dollar industry that
eliminates copper wire in communications a reality.
Today, at age 87, Sam DiVita still
comes to work at the US Army Signal Corps every day.
