Giants of Optical Networking

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Optical Networks

      Why do we need so much fiber?

      Where did it come from?

      How did it get there?

      Where does it go?

Isaac Newton - Super Giant I - A Giant Among Giants.

English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian who is considered to be one of the most influential people in human history.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants."

"I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly,
by little and little, into a fully and clear light."

"Nature and nature's laws lay hid in Night.
God said, 'Let Newton be!'
And all was light."
Alexander Pope's couplet

Written in English and released to the public in 1704.

This is considered to be one of the greatest
scientific works in history.

Willebrord Snellius

Willebrord Snellius was born in Leiden, Netherlands.

He discovered the law of refraction in 1621.

Snell's Law - When a beam of light travels from one medium to another (as from air to water, the angle of incidence and the refractive index of the medium, determines its exit direction.

Snell's Law is fundamental to the design of optical fibers and almost all optical components.

Adm. Grace Hopper

American computer scientist and United States Navy officer.

A pioneering computer scientist and United States Navy officer.

She developed the first compiler for a computer programming language.

She conceptualized the idea of machine-independent programming languages, which led to the development of COBOL, one of the first modern programming languages.

Because of the breadth of her accomplishments and her naval rank, she is sometimes referred to as "The Amazing Grace".

She is credited with popularizing the term "debugging" for fixing computer glitches (motivated by an actual moth removed from the computer). The moth is scotch taped to an early "blog."

An Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, is a ship of the United States Navy named for the pioneering computer scientist, Rear Admiral "Amazing Grace" Hopper.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates founded a company, Microsoft, developing operating systems for personal computers that used "windows" and an innovative desktop paradigm. He commercialized PARC's GUI (Graphical User Interface). He has all but accomplished his famous mission statement, to put “a computer on every desk and in every home."

The Microsoft startup team.

Vint Cerf - Father of the Internet

The design of the Internet was done at DARPA in 1973 and published in 1974.

There ensued about 10 years of hard work, resulting in the roll out of Internet in 1983.

His awards include the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and membership in the National Academy of Engineering.

Vint talks about the future of the Internet.

An Internet of Things & an Inter-planetary Internet:

Sir Timothy Berners-Lee Super Giant II

Invented the World Wide Web in March at 1989 while at CERN.

In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his pioneering work. Founded and directs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Invented the Web 2.0, TheSemantic Web.

Click here for his personal home page.

The Large Hadron Collider generates 15 petabytes of data per year.

(What happens when you stick your head in a particle accelerator - true story.)

Original sketch of the WWW

Sir Tim talks about the future of the World Wide Web:

Alexander Graham Bell

1876 Patents the telephone.

1880 Invented the photophone.

Telephone Switching

We're moving from a 'switching' paradigm
to a 'steering' (aka 'routing') paradigm.

Today, we each have a phone number.

Tomorrow, we each will have our own wavelength.

Don't switch electrons; steer photons.

James Clerk Maxwell - Super Giant III

In 1864, Maxwell's equations demonstrated that electricity, magnetism and light are all manifestations of the same phenomenon, namely the electromagnetic field.

His equations describe all the observed phenomena of electricity, magnetism and light.

The equations are neat, simple and of elegant symmetrical beauty.

This was the paramount scientific achievement of the nineteenth century.

Maxwell's Equations

Maxwell's Rainbow

Quantity Prefixes

0.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 = yocto
0.000,000,000,000,000,000,001 = zepto
0.000,000,000,000,000,001 = atto
0.000,000,000,000,001 = femto
0.000,000,000,001 = pico
0.000,000,001 = nano
0.000,001 = micro
0.001 = milli
0.01 = centi
0.1 = deci
1 = (none)
10 = deca
100 = hecto
1,000 = kilo
1,000,000 = mega
1,000,000,000 = giga
1,000,000,000,000 = tera
1,000,000,000,000,000 = peta
1,000,000,000,000,000,000 = exa
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = zetta
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = yotta
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 = unnamed
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0000 = googol

Note: An ångström is equal to 0.1 nanometers. The ångström is still commonly used but it is not part of the official International System of Units (SI). Today the use of the ångström as a unit is less popular than it used to be, and the nanometer is often used instead. The use of the ångström is officially discouraged by the International Committee for Weights and Measures.

Steve Case

Co-founder and former CEO and chairman of America Online (AOL).

'You've got mail!'

(but dial-up over copper wires - very low bandwidth)

The World Wide Wait begins.

Larry Page & Sergey Brin - The Google Guys

Mission - "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"

Slogan - "Don't be evil."

Google is now a verb.

Shawn Fanning

Developed Napster, a peer-to-peer file-sharing program designed to let music fans find and trade music. Users put whatever files they were willing to share with others into special directories on their hard drives. The service had more than 25 million users at its peak in 2001, and was shut down after a series of high-profile lawsuits, not before helping to spark the digital music revolution now dominated by Apple. Napster has since been rebranded and acquired by Roxio.

Steve Jobs - Super Giant IV

Steve Jobs innovative idea of a personal computer led him into revolutionizing the computer hardware and software industry. The Apple founder changed the way we work, play and communicate. He made simple and uncluttered web design stylish. The story of Apple and Steve Jobs is about determination, creative genius, pursuit of innovation with passion and purpose.

There are 160 million iOS's out there now. That's why we need fiber optics.

Stewart Butterfield And Caterina Fake

Stewart Butterfield and wife Caterina Fake created Flickr that was born out of an online multi-player game that seemed to sum up everything Web 2.0. Flickr's idea is that you no longer had an album. Instead, you had a photo stream. Yahoo later on acquired Flickr in 2005.

Steve Sasson

At Kodak, in December 1975, Sasson assembled the first digital camera and persuaded a lab assistant to pose for them. The black-and-white image, captured at a resolution of .01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), took 23 seconds to record onto a digital cassette tape and another 23 seconds to read off a playback unit onto a television. Then it popped up on the screen.

Upon seeing the image, the assistant remarked, "You guys need a lot of work."

Garrett Camp

Garrett has guided StumbleUpon’s development since 2001, from inception to over 12M registered members. StumbleUpon is now the largest personalized content discovery engine on the web, delivering over 700 million personalized recommendations per month from its index of 60 million human-submitted pages.

Jack Dorsey

Created Twitter to allow friends and family know what he was doing. The world’s fastest-growing communications medium let users broadcast their thoughts in 140 characters or less. No one thought people would want to follow strangers, or that celebrities would use Twitter to tell fans of their activities, or that businesses would use Twitter to announce discounts or launch new products.

His new company is Square, which turns cellphones into credit card readers.

Click on his name in the title to see his inspirational talk at Stanford in February 2011.

Dorsey's original design sketch for Twitter.

Read the Simple Twitter Book.

Evan Williams

Ev has founded several Web companies included Blogger (bought by Google) and Twitter (with Jack Dosey).

What is Ev up to now?

Follow him on Twitter.

Mark Zukerberg

Founded Facebook to help university students keep in touch with friends. Users update their extended network of friends on what they’re doing. They show off photos, upload videos, join causes, groups, and have fun. The site is believed to have 600 million users worldwide has only four remaining countries left to conquer: Russia, Japan, China and Korea.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim

Started YouTube which is broadcasting more than 100 million short videos daily. Hurley designed the site’s interface and logo. Chen and Karim divided technical duties. They later split management tasks, based on strengths and interests: Hurley became CEO; Chen, Chief Technology Officer. A year and a half later, Google acquired YouTube for a deal worth $1.65 billion in stock.

Niklas Zennstrom

Co-founded the fastest growing communications trend in history called Skype.

It offers consumers worldwide free software for making superior-quality calls with video using their computer and expanded its offering for Linux, MAC & PC and mobile/ handheld devices.

170 million people use Skype every month.

Skype is now a verb. (Microsoft me?)

Jimmy Wales

In 2001, he co-founded WikiPedia which revolutionized the encyclopedia industry.

In 2004, he co-founded the WikiMedia Foundation

Jeremie Miller

Invented Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) which is basis of instant messaging and texting.

Dave Winer

So What's the Problem?

What happens to a flashlight beam when you shine it into the dark night?

The beam becomes dimmer (attenuation).

The beam spreads out (dispersion).

These are the two basic problems our Optical Giants needed to solve.

Albert Einstein - Super Giant V

In 1905, Einstein postulated that light exists in bundles of electromagnetic energy callws photons. The energy of photons is proportional to the frequency of the light.

In 1917, he pointed out the possibility of the stimulated emission radiation which is the basis of the laser.

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

Quantum Experiments

Mme Marie Curie

Winner of a 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Discovered the element radium and its power to emit energy in the form of gamma rays.

Created the theory of radioactivity (coined the word).

Discovered the element polonium.

First use of radioactivity to treat cancers.

Charles Townes & Arthur Schawlow

In 1957 they invented the first working LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

Belle Free was Towne's high school optics teacher in Greenville, South Carolina

Theodore Maiman

In 1960, Ted Maiman demonstrated the first working laser - the Ruby Laser.

People said that it was "an invention looking for a job."

Semiconductor Laser Landmarks

Robert Hall's team at GE makes the first diode laser.

1970 The first continuous wave room-temperature diode laser is demonstrated.

1973 Laser lifetime reaches 1000 hours.

1976 Laser lifetime reaches 100,000 hours.

Charles Kao

In 1966, Kao proposes to use glass fibers as an optical transmission medium.

He believes that fibers with sufficiently low loss can be developed.

Will Hicks - Super Giant VI

The father of the telecosmic vision - an all optical network with no electrons.

Don't switch electrons. Steer photons.

The co-inventer of single-mode fiber.

He solved the problem of dispersion.

It was a breath taking accomplishment.

Belle Free was his high school optics teacher in Greenville, South Carolina.

Elias Snitzer

In 1961, Snitzer published a comprehensive theoretical description of single-mode fibers. He coinvented single mode fiber with Will Hicks.

Single mode fibers are essential for long distance optical networking.

Later, he demonstrated optical amplification using Erbium doped fiber.

He helped solved the problems of attenuation and dispersion.

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