Today (November 4, 1933) is the birthday of Nobel Laureate Sir Charles Kuen Kao, the father of broadband, who created optical fibres and used them in telecommunications.
Sir Charles Kuen Kao was born on
November 4, 1933, in Shanghai, China. His ancestral home is in nearby Jinzan.
He studied Chinese and English and French at the Shanghai International School
with his brother at home. Kao's family moved to Hong Kong in 1948. There he
received his higher education in 1952 from St. Joseph's College and his bachelor’s
degree (BSc) in Electrical Engineering from Woolwich Polytechnic College
(University of Greenwich). In 1965 he received his PhD in Harold Barlow
Guidance from the University College London as a research student. As an
external student under Harold Barlow, a professor at University College London,
he worked at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) (Telephone
Research Center) in Harlow, England.
At the UK-based Standard
Telecommunication Laboratories (STL) in the 1960s, Kao and his colleagues
pioneered the realization of fibre optics as a telecommunications medium. In
1963, when Kao first joined the Optical Communications research team, he made
notes to summarize the background situation and technology available at the
time and to identify key individuals involved. To this end, he collected samples
from different fibre manufacturers and carefully examined the properties of the
bulk glass. Kao's study relied primarily on himself. Contaminants in the
material caused high light losses of those fibres. Cao was appointed chairman
of the electro-optics research team at STL. He took over SDL's fibreglass
telecommunications program in December 1964. Because his supervisor, Karboviak,
left to become head of communications at the School of Electrical Engineering
at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia.
Kao is a pioneer in the
development and use of fibre optics in telecommunications. In the 1960s he
developed various methods to combine fibreglass with serials to transfer
electronic data. This became a basic requirement for the development of the
Internet. Kao is known as the father of broadband. Also known as the father
of fibre optics and the father of fibre optic communication. Kao was awarded
the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research on fibreglass communication.
Nobel laureate Sir Charles Kuen Kao, who developed and used fibre optics in
telecommunications, passed away on September 23, 2018, at the age of 84 in
Bradbury Hospice, Hong Kong.
Source By: Wikipedia
Information: Ramesh, Assistant
Professor of Physics, Nehru Memorial College, Puthanampatti, Trichy.
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