Fiber Optic facts
While investigating facts about Fiber Optic Cable and Fiber Optic Christmas Tree, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The US government has given $400 billion to ISPs to build a fiber optic network. The ISPs kept the money and never built the network.
how fiber optics work?
Verizon developed a special knife that uses pressurized air to slice through lawns so fiber optic lines can be buried. The tool cuts through grass but does not break sprinkler pipes and gas lines.
What fiber optic cable?
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what fiber optics is used for. Here are 50 of the best facts about Fiber Optic Internet and Fiber Optic Tree I managed to collect.
what's fiber optic internet?
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Google wraps its undersea fiber optic cables in Kevlar to protect them from shark bites.
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Concrete can be made translucent by incorporating optical fibers in merely 4% of its volume. The material feels and behaves just like concrete, but allows light to pass through.
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Plants of the Fenestraria genus produce optical fibers made from crystalline oxalic acid to transmit light to subterranean photosynthetic sites.
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In 2002, a widely-watched live TV special followed a robot as it crawled through a 5" opening in the Great Pyramid of Giza, punched a hole in a door at the end of the passage, and inserted a fiber optic camera into the hole. Behind the door was nothing but a small empty space.
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Star Destroyer models were illuminated by 100,000 hand wired strands of fiber optics in the original Star Wars trilogy. For the Super Star Destroyer, they switched to brass etching by hand to increase the number to 250,000.
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Deep-sea fiber optic cables are now buried under the seabed, because the electricity running through them used to attract sharks who would bite into them - electrocuting the shark and destroying the cable
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Squirrels cause seventeen percent of fiber optic cable cuts
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Companies that are mounting laser beams on top of buildings to deliver financial trading data tiny bits faster than fiber optic. This allows high speed stock trading algorithms to capitalize on info known before anyone else.
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In 2009 Jim Barksdale completed a nearly straight 300 million dollar fiber-optic link between Chicago and NYC. By shaving 3ms off the previously fastest connection, Barksdale can charge 8 to 10 times the going rate because any trading algorithm not operating on his network is at a disadvantage.
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In 2013 some trading firms laid a new transatlantic fiber-optic cable stretching 3,000 miles and costing 300 million USD between London and New York. As a result, their stock trading orders are executed 5.2 milliseconds faster.
Why fiber optic internet is better?
You can easily fact check why fiber optics by examining the linked well-known sources.
Multiple city citizens have been paying thousands in taxes to upgrade to fiber optics that was never delivered (Since as early as 1992!!)
Fiber-optic internet cables on the sea floor has to be wrapped in kevlar to protect them from shark bites - source
Over 99% of international communication is delivered by undersea fiber-optic cables that spread between each continent.
Alexander Graham Bell invented the photophone, a precursor to fiber-optics. He believed it to be his most important invention. - source
When fiber optics invented?
When fiber optics became important, germanium was used in that field.
How fiber optic cable works?
Now, 85% of the world consumption of germanium is in fiber optics.
A Georgian woman sent almost all of Armenia offline for about 12 hours by damaging an international fiber-optic backbone cable with a shovel while scavenging for scrap metal.
Bell Labs achieved a 100 Petabit per second data transfer using fiber optics. Thats 100 million Gigabits per second.
optical fibers cost about $1 million per kilogram to produce.
Fiber Optic cables transmit light in IR spectrum, not in visible light.
