Cover Image, Volume 7, Issue 4

Abstract

Optical fiber has a long and rich history. Even before the electromagnetic wave equation was revealed by Maxwell in 1865, Tyndall – building on the efforts of Colladon and Babinet – popularized total internal reflection to a broad audience, thanks in part to our ability to ‘see’ light. Proposed for use in several imaging applications in the early 20th century, a pivotal moment in the development of optical fiber was the invention of the fiber cladding, which enabled the control of a dielectric waveguide's mode distribution. The 1960's saw the development of the technologies, such as single mode fiber and semiconductor lasers, required to build a prototypical optical communication system, while developments in fiber fabrication processes in the 1970's led to the very first low‐loss fiber. With further reductions in the transmission loss in fibers, coupled with the development of the erbium doped fiber amplifier (EDFA) which obviated the need for electrical repeaters, the world became ‘fiberized’ by the 1990's. The systems of today continue to scale in both power and bandwidth, enabled in part by new developments in optical fibers, from the perspective of both the waveguide and the materials comprising them. For further information see “Glass: The Carrier of Light – A Brief History of Optical Fiber” in this issue by J. Ballato and P. Dragic. Cover credits: Christie Klinger and Payton Focken, Visualization Lab Graphics Services, University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign. image