koNko writes ...
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"If you are reading this, thank Sir Charles Kuen Kao, for it would be impossible without him.

No Google. No Twitter. No email, instant messaging or Netflix.

None of it would be possible without the curious mind and inventive imagination of Charles Kao, born 高錕 in Shanghai, China, 04 November 1933.

Hailed by his fellow scientists and engineers as “Father of Fibre Optics”, “The Godfather of Broadband” and “Father of Fiber Optic Communication”, Kao received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his pioneering work with Lasers and fiber optics cracking the code of transmitting digital signals at the speed of light, solving the problem of light attenuation in solids to make this:

Into this: 010101010 and every beautiful and horrible manifestation that flows through the intertubes to our senses and brains

Where his colleagues in Standard Telecommunication Laboratories struggled to overcome the roadblock of light signal loss by the theory and practice of refractive index ratios of core and cladding, Kao looked to nature in all it's imperfect glory and found impurities in the materials that he thought if eliminated, would overcome the interference and transmit the light with low loss over long distances. Why? Because pure materials fit the models.

Convinced, he published a proposal in 1965 to replace copper wires with silica glass. He then scoured the earth looking for supporters and got doors slammed in his face by the likes of Bell Labs, Corning et al, who thought he was crazy but later invested and profited billions from his inventions as they rolled-out fiber-optic networks and trans-oceanic cable a decade later when the fruits of Kao’s labor — ultrapure fused silica glass — demonstrated data bandwidth beyond his initial projections

It changed an industry, communications and the world.

Kao would go on to develop the technology (the single-mode transport signals he championed over multi-mode are now the dominant high-speed method) as well as returning to academia to found the Electrical Engineering Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and inspiring generations of students, including me, to jump into the water to DO SOMETHING.

“I’m an engineer, so my real purpose is something that is useful,” he said in a 2004 interview with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. “I still feel that it is not the invention of something that is important. It is how we can utilize that, then, to improve life that is important.”

Diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease in 2002, Dr. Kao spent his remaining years in Hong Kong teaching and living as active a life as he could manage. His family's loss is shared by admirers around the world.

Thank you, Teacher. Farewell. "


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_K._Kao

Wow...thank you sir indeed. RIP

“I still feel that it is not the invention of something that is important. It is how we can utilize that, then, to improve life that is important.”

Wiser words are rarely said.

I worked at Northern Telecom (Canadian "Bell") in the early 80's, on silicon that implemented fiber optics communication.

Everything we did was based on Kao's work, and his name was spoken now and then by the engineers in hushed, reverent tones.

Thanks, Charles, for thinking outside the box :)

And getting all those doors slammed in your face.

And he said, let there be light.