The 1960s was a turning point for the fiber optic industry following the breakthrough discovery by Charles Kao (2009 Nobel Prize Laureate in Physics) and George Hockham from Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in England on reducing the loss in glass fibers by removing impurities. In the following decade, the work conducted by scientists at Corning and Bell Laboratories resulted in the development of a scalable mass production process for the manufacturing of low-loss optical fibers, which are now widely deployed to transmit voice and data over long distances.
Optical fibers, which are a commodity for the telecommunications industry, have found their way into the sensing industry. In the early days, fiber optic sensor technology was ...