Professional Documents
Culture Documents
the society
Plan
1. Introduction
Contention
Optical fibres have a great impact on our society
Background information about optical fibres
An optical fibre is a semi-flexible, transparent, and extremely thin
strand of pure glass that has the diameter of a human hair.
Thousands of these strands are arranged in bundles to make a
thicker cable. Since glass is optically transparent we are able to
send information-laden rays of light over long distances. The
bigger the diameter of the optical fibre, the more information is
sent through. Information is sent through as a light signal by
using total internal reflection, which is the light signal reflected at
an angle higher
than the critical.
This process is
called total
internal
reflection
Linking sentence
Optical fibres affect our society greatly because without it, many
things would have never been invented.
2. History of Optical Fibres
Topic Sentence
The history of optical fibres is a long and rather intriguing one.
Argument/Topic 1 with information
The first glass to be have drawn into fibres was at the time of
the Romans. Later on, the first optical telegraph to have been
invented was by the French Chappe brothers in the 1790s. The
Chappe optical telegraph was a device/system made up of
series of lights mounted on the towers where
operators/workers would relay the message from one tower to
the next. After a century, physicists Daniel Collodon and
Jacques Babinet showed that light can be directed along jets of
water. This was soon improved on by a British physicist, John
Tyndall, who proved through experimentation that light signals
can be bent. In 1880, when Alexander Bell Graham invented
the optical telephone system, William Wheeler invented a
system of light pipes lined with a highly reflective coating that
illuminated homes from an electric arc lamp placed in the
basement directing the light around the house using these
pipes. The first attempt to guiding light images and television
was in 1888, attempted by a French engineer by the name of
Henry Saint-Rene using a system of bent glass rods. There
were many attempts after this at transmitting images but the
first successful attempt at this was by Heinrich Lamm through
a bundle of optical fibres in the 1920s. Unfortunately, his
effort to file a patent was denied because of Hansells own
patent. Another person was also denied after attempting to file
Essay
An optical fibre is a semi-flexible,
transparent, and extremely thin strand of
pure glass that has the diameter of a
human hair. Thousands of these strands are
arranged in bundles to make a thicker
cable. Since glass is optically transparent
we are able to send information-laden rays
of light over long distances. The bigger the
diameter of the optical fibre, the more
information is sent through. Information is
sent through as a light signal by using total
internal reflection, which is the light signal
reflected at an angle higher than the critical
angle. This process is called total internal reflection. The history of
optical fibres began from the time of the Romans and was further
advanced and improved to what we have now. It is used today in
communication networking and data transfer, and used in
hospitals. Optical fibres affect
our society greatly because
without it, many things would
have never been invented.
The history of optical fibres is a long and rather intriguing one.
The first glass to be have drawn into fibres was at the time of the
Romans. Later on, the first optical telegraph to have been
invented was by the French Chappe brothers in the 1790s. The
Chappe optical telegraph was a device/system made up of series
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Optical fibres have really affected our society by its use in our
communication services and transferrance of data from one
region or area to another. Optical fibre cables have made a big
change in our modern society. A single optic fibre, which is a tenth
as thick as the diameter of a human hair, can easily carry by itself
25,000 calls. Imagine what
one entire cable can do,
probably millions of calls being
carried through. In the olden
days, copper wires were used
for mostly everything to do
with light bulbs and wiring of
phones and internet. Now,
optical fibre cables are being
used more often than copper wires because of several things.
Firstly, even though optical fibres are more expensive to install
than copper wires, it is more safe than copper as copper is very
susceptible to shock hazard. Secondly, optical fibres is much more
lighter and thinner than the big clumsy copper wires, having
another advantage over copper wires. Thirdly, optic fibres are
immune to radio frequency interference and electromagnetic
interference which would be amazing especially where close
proximity to electronic deivces can cause these interferences.
Finally, optical fibres have a much huger data bandwidth than
copper wires, transmitting more data than what copper wires
could do. Optical fibres have shaped our society in a much more
defined manner where everything is available to you in the matter
of a couple of seconds.
Today, hospitals and methods of healing and diagnosing have
been further improved by the use of optic fibres. A device that
uses optical fibres and is used in hospitals is the endoscope. What
is the endoscope? The endoscope is an instrument that is used to
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Bibliography
http://www.explainthatstuff.com/endoscopes.html
http://www.laserfocusworld.com/articles/2011/01/medicalapplications-of-fiber-optics-optical-fiber-sees-growth-as-medicalsensors.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOPFzOgQH4w
http://www.timbercon.com/history-of-fiber-optics/
http://searchnetworking.techtarget.com/definition/fiber-optic
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