Known as “The father of fiber optics”, he revolutionized global communication and the world of telecommunications
Charles Kao was a prominent Chinese engineer whose advances in the mid-20th century were instrumental in the development of the internet. “The father of fiber optics” was born on November 4, 1933, so Google has decided to pay tribute to him with its traditional doodle.
This 88-year-old physicist and educator has revolutionized global communication and the world of telecommunications. The engineer died in Hong Kong on September 23, 2018. He had suffered from Alzheimer’s since early 2000.
“Happy birthday, Charles K. Kao. Thank you for using every fiber of your being to make the world a more connected place! ” Recalls Google.
Who is Charles Kuen Kao
Charles Kuen Kao was born on November 4, 1933 in Shanghai, the son of a lawyer who graduated from the University of Michigan. As a child, Charles studied Chinese culture with a home teacher, completing secondary education in English and French in 1952 at St Joseph’s College in Hong Kong, where his family had moved.
Charles K. Kao later moved to England where he studied electrical engineering at what is now known as the University of Greenwich. In 1965 he received his doctorate from the University of London and began working as an engineer at the Standard Telephones and Cables (STC) research center in Harlow (England) under the supervision of Alec Reeves.
Charles K. Kao
In the 1960s, the emergence of new applications and the growing demand for telecommunications services demanded greater capacity in systems, especially long-distance ones. Kao thought that the solution could be found by shifting the spectrum down to the optical frequencies.
Contrary to the general opinion of his colleagues, Kao and his team of theorist George Hockham seriously believed in the need to replace copper with glass as a suitable carrier for the incessant telecommunications traffic. The challenge was also finding the right light source.
Theodore Maiman had already shown a working laser in 1960. In 1966 Kao was able to perform the calculations necessary to transmit light over long distances using fiber optics. With fiberglass it was possible to transmit light signals over 100 kilometers instead of the 20 kilometers at that time.
How Charles Kuen Kao Created the Optimal Fiber
Peter Selway, working with semiconductor lasers in 1963, received very precise specifications from Charles Kao in 1966. Shortly after earning his Ph.D., Kao and his collaborator George Hockham published a groundbreaking paper this year proposing that purified glass fibers could transport a gigahertz (one billion hertz) of information over long distances using lasers. Based on the distance between repeaters in existing networks, Kao calculated that fiber could replace copper if the attenuation were lower, at 20 db / km. (Today it is less than 1 db / km).
In 1970 Corning Glass showed that a fused silica waveguide had losses of only 17 db / km and was capable of manufacturing 100 m coils with which industrial production was ensured. Kao led the development of this revolutionary technologyand in 1977 the first telephone network transmitted signals in real time through optical fibers. Later, in the 1980s, Kao oversaw the implementation of fiber optic networks around the world.
Kao was a dedicated educator as well as a pioneering researcher. Starting in 1987, he spent nearly a decade as Vice Chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and founded the Hong Kong Independent Schools Foundation. Kao’s groundbreaking research paved the way for the more than 900 million kilometers of fiber optic cable that now carries vast amounts of data around the world.
So much so that the president of the US National Academy of Engineering, William Wulf, declared that “communication as we know it today, including the Internet, would not exist without fiber optics.”
For his research and development of fiber optic telecommunications he received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics. He also received numerous nicknames: “Godfather of Broadband”, “Father of Fiber Optics” and the “Father of Fiber Optic Communication.