Feature
Two Breakthroughs That Revolutionized Optics
The joint history of lasers and fiber optics illustrates the many interconnected steps through which truly revolutionary breakthroughs unfold.
Left: Fiber optics, Bell Laboratories, 1976. [Nokia Corporation and AT&T Archives, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection] Right: General Electric laser-assisted machining, 1975. [General Electric Research and Development Center, courtesy AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, Physics Today Collection]
In 1950, optics was something of a backwater in physics. World War II had driven major advances in spectroscopy and infrared technology, but to an ambitious student, optics could seem an unexciting world of eyeglasses and optical instruments. When Jay Last graduated in 1951 from the University of Rochester’s Institute of Optics, USA, his professor Parker Givens said the action was in solid-state physics.
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