Talk:Optical fiber/Draft introduction

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This is a proposed introduction section to make the article more accessible to non-technical readers. This should make clear what the article is about without using excessive technical jargon. The article should be rearranged to move up the sections that will be interesting and understandable to the greatest number of readers, while the technical details should be moved down in the article. This hopefully makes the article valuable to all Wikipedia readers, but still keeps all of the technical content needed to make the article complete.

To be determined: Should this be a seperate section, or an expanded lead section?

The Photon 02:19, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

An optical fiber is a glass or plastic fiber designed to guide light along its length by total internal reflection. Optical fibers are widely used in optical fiber communications, which permits digital data transmission over longer distances and at higher data rates than electronic communication (Need to make this both clear and correct.) They are also used to form sensors, and in a variety of other applications.

The light-guiding principle behind optical fibers was first demonstrated in Victorian times, but modern optical fibers were only developed beginning in the 1950's. Optical fibers became practical for use in communications in the late 1970's, and since then several technical advances have been made to extend the reach and speed capability of optical fibers, and lower the cost of fiber communications systems.

The operating principle of optical fibers applies to a number of variants including multi-mode optical fibers, single-mode optical fibers, graded-index optical fibers, and step-index optical fibers. Because of the physics of the optical fiber, special methods of splicing fibers and of connecting them to other equipment are needed. A variety of methods are used to manufacture optical fibers, and the fibers are also built into different kinds of cables depending on how they will be used.