Who Invented Fiber Optics

The fiber optics that we have known today, has gone through so many stages of development before it be came what it is now. The metamorphosis of fiber optics can be credited to the many minds that have made extraordinary refinement of the function of fiber optics.

If we want to know who invented fiber optics, we must trace back to the times when it was modeled from. Actually the idea of fiber optics was inspired from the works of John Tyndall who in 1854, have presented the possibility of having light traveled through an irregular path, before the Royal Society, which gave the idea that light wave can be deformed.

Another noted scientist who can be credited to the flourishing of the fiber optics technology today is Alexander Graham Bell, however he is not the answer to the question “who invented fiber optics”. The photophone, which Bell invented provided an impetus for the development of fiber optics, because from there the thought that message can travel through medium had been noted.

The idea that light and message has become the inspiration of the workings of fiber optics at present. Who invented fiber optics, again was hard to answer even if William Wheeler in 1880, Roth and Ross in 1895 who are medical students from Vienna Austria, and David Smith had made their respective efforts in conducting experiments of making light pass through a channel.

It was only in 1930 that Heinrich Lamm who was pursuing a medical degree, was the first to successfully put strand of fiber optics together to send an image from one point to another receiving end. It is in this phase that fiber optics gained prominence as a possible tool of reaching the inner parts of the body that were otherwise hard to reach.

Several other scientists had followed suit in developing the use of fiber optics, so it is really hard to determine who invented fiber optics. The likes of Abraham Van Heel, and Elias Snitzer published their own works regarding fiber optics in 1954 and 1961, respectively. Dr. C.K. Kao was the one who determined the amount of decibels lost when transmitting messages. He was the one who proposed the manufacture of fiber optics made of pure glass material to minimize light loss. The proposal had opened the possibility of sending light waves over long distances. The famous Corning Company was the one that manufactured fiber optics in mass volume that was commissioned by the US Army Signal Corp.

The many innovators of fiber optics deserve adulations and praises, but as to who invented fiber optics you can only count plenty of heads.