Was it always believed that optical fibers would transmit data?
Not initially, no. Many believed that the inherent impurities in glass would always cause too much signal loss for practical long-distance communication. There was a prevailing skepticism. However, my work was grounded in the idea that if we could purify the glass to an extremely high degree, we could overcome this limitation. The 'Optical Fiber Communications' book outlines this journey. The future is in the glass, but only with meticulous attention to material purity and precise understanding of light’s behavior within it. It was a matter of proving the theoretical possibility through rigorous analysis and persistent experimentation.
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