By James R. Hagerty
In the 1960s, Charles Kao often annoyed his wife, Gwen, by
coming home late for dinner.
Dr. Kao, a refugee from the Chinese Communist revolution, told
her his research for a British subsidiary of International
Telephone & Telegraph Corp. could change the world one day.
"Oh, really," his wife later recalled saying with a dash of
sarcasm. "So you'll get the Nobel Prize, will you?"
That didn't happen until 2009, long after Dr. Kao really did
change the world.
In a 1966 paper written with George Hockham, he outlined the
potential for using pulses of light to carry huge volumes of voice
and data signals long distances through strands of glass that
became known as optical fibers. Few took him seriously until
several years later, when Corning Glass Works found ways to do just
that.
Fiber-optic cables began carrying telephone signals in the late
1970s. By the 1990s, a global mesh of fiber optics had made the
internet possible and turned copper telephone wires into
relics.
When people stream video at the beach, they tend to thank
wireless technology. Few recognize the role of Dr. Kao. "It's a
little silly we call it the wireless industry," said Daniel
Berninger, a communications-network architect. "There's nothing
wireless in the network except for that distance from your phone to
the nearest cell tower," where optical fibers take over.
By the time he got his Nobel, Dr. Kao was suffering from
Alzheimer's disease and had trouble speaking. He died Sept. 23 in
Hong Kong at the age of 84.
Kao Kuen, who adopted the English name Charles, was born Nov. 4,
1933, in Shanghai. His father, who attended law school in Michigan,
was a judge. His parents, whose first two children died of measles,
pampered him, hired tutors and didn't send him to school until he
was 10.
"Maybe it was the home tutoring, or the late start to formal
schooling, or an overly cautious and protective upbringing," he was
quoted as saying in his Nobel biographical note, "but in any case I
never became a talkative person. As an adult I am not always
comfortable in social gatherings with small talk."
As Chinese Communists battled Nationalists in 1948, his family
fled to Hong Kong, where Charles finished high school. Naturally
curious, he used phosphorus to make exploding mud balls and once
accidentally splashed nitric acid on his little brother's trousers,
prompting his parents to impound his chemicals.
During a six-week sea voyage to England, where he would study
electrical engineering at Woolwich Polytechnic, he met a professor
who passed the time at sea teaching him quantum mechanics. Upon
arrival in London, disappointed by the meager provisions at his
London boardinghouse, he developed a taste for fish and chips.
After finishing his undergraduate degree in 1957, he got a
research job at Standard Telephones & Cables, a British unit of
ITT, and later earned a doctorate from University College
London.
Though scientists were excited about the potential of light
beams to carry data, it was unclear how to do it. Efforts to send
laser signals through open air ran into interference from the
weather, causing the beams to "bounce around," as Dr. Kao put it.
Another approach, streaming light pulses down hollow tubes, proved
overly complicated.
Transmission through glass strands was seen as another
possibility, but impurities in glass available at the time meant
light signals could travel only a few yards. Dr. Kao calculated the
degree to which impurities could be reduced. He concluded it would
be "difficult but not impossible" to create sufficiently pure
glass. So it proved.
The key, wrote Jeff Hecht, the author of a history of fiber
optics, "was Kao's question. He asked what was possible to do, not
what had been done."
In an oral history recorded in 2004, Dr. Kao described his
landmark 1966 paper as the result of "a bit of detective work as
well as good theory and good fundamentals. So there was really
nothing spectacular."
Dr. Kao spent 30 years at various units of ITT, including a
posting in Roanoke, Va., and became director of corporate research.
He later was vice chancellor of the Chinese University of Hong
Kong.
His family established the Charles K. Kao Foundation for
Alzheimer's Disease to educate the public and improve care.
Dr. Kao was once asked how long fiber optics would be used.
Nothing better was likely to come along for 1,000 years, he said.
"But don't believe what I say," he added, "because I didn't believe
what experts said either."
Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 28, 2018 10:44 ET (14:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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