Like a lot inventions in the past two centuries, modern fibre optic cable was created for military uses. The manager for Copper Cable and Wire at the US Army Signal Corps was getting more displeased with the amount of signal loss that was due to copper cable.

Like any person high of rank in the Army, he decided to take his trouble out on someone lower then him. In this case it was a man named Sam DiVita. DiVita wanted to use light transmitted via glass fibre to send signals from point to point, however, given that glass was a brittle substance, any fibres that he could produce would break easily.

In September 1959 DiVita asked 2nd Lt. Richard Sturzebecher if he knew of a way to produce a strong glass fiber that would be capable of carrying a light signal. Sturzebecher had melted 3 triaxil glass systems together for...