Charles K. Kao, Transtech Services Ltd.
Robert D. Maurer, Corning (retired)
John B. MacChesney, Lucent Technologies

"For the conception and invention of optical fiber for communications and for the development of manufacturing processes that made the telecommunications revolution possible."

The development of optical fiber technology was a watershed event in the global telecommunications and information technology revolution. Many of us today take for granted our ability to communicate on demand, much as earlier generations quickly took for granted the availability of electricity. But this dramatic and rapid revolution would simply not be possible but for the development of silica fiber as a high bandwidth, light-carrying medium for the transport of voice, video, and data. The silica fiber is now as fundamental to communication as the silicon integrated circuit is to computing. Optical fiber is the "concrete" of the "information superhighway." By the end of 1998, there were more than 215 million kilometers of optical fiber installed for communications worldwide.

Through their efforts, Kao, Maurer, and MacChesney created the basis of modern fiber optic communications. Their creative application of materials science and engineering and chemical engineering to every aspect of fiber materials composition, characterization, and manufacturing, their understanding of the stringent materials requirements placed on the fiber by the performance needs of the telecommunications system, and, above all, their dedication to achieving their vision, were all critical to their success.

Charles K. Kao, Robert D. Maurer, and John B. MacChesney have been selected to receive the Charles Stark Draper Prize, one of the engineering profession’s highest honors. They will share the prize’s $500,000 cash award.

The Engineers



Charles K. Kao was born in 1933 in Shanghai, China. He received a B.Sc. degree in 1957 and a Ph.D. degree in 1965 both in electrical engineering from the University of London.

He joined ITT in 1957 as an engineer at Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd., an ITT subsidiary in the United Kingdom. In 1960, he joined Standard Telecommunications Laboratories Ltd., UK, ITT's central research facility in Europe, and rose through the ranks from a research scientist to a research manager during his 10 years of service. It was during this period that Dr. Kao made his pioneering contributions to the field of optical fiber for communications.

After a four years leave of absence spent at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Kao returned to ITT in 1974 when the field of optical fibers was ready for the pre-product phase. He joined the electro-optical products division in Roanoke, Va., as chief scientist and later became director of engineering. In 1982, in recognition of his outstanding research and management abilities, ITT named him the first ITT executive scientist. He was stationed mainly at the Advanced Technology Center in Connecticut, but spent 1985 at SEL Research Center in Germany. Concurrently, he was appointed an adjunct professor and fellow of Trumbull College at Yale University. In 1986, he was named corporate director of research.

From 1987 until 1996, Dr. Kao served as vice chancellor (president) of The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is currently chairman and chief executive officer of Transtech Services Ltd. in Hong Kong. He continues his efforts in telecommunications and information network development as well as in research into future networks. Kao was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1990.



Robert D. Maurer was born in 1924 and is a native of Arkadelphia, Ark. He received a B.S. degree in physics in 1948 from the University of Arkansas and a Ph.D. degree, also in physics, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951. His education at the university was interrupted by service with the 99th infantry division in Europe.

Following a post-graduate year at MIT, Maurer joined the physics department of Corning's research and development laboratory, progressing from research physicist in 1952 through senior research associate and manager of the fundamental physics department to research fellow in 1978. In 1970, Maurer and his colleagues designed and produced the first optical fiber with optical losses low enough for use in telecommunications. Maurer retired from Corning in 1989. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1979.



John B. MacChesney was born in New Jersey in 1929. He earned a B.A. degree in chemistry from Bowdoin College in 1951. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and subsequently studied at City College of New York and New York University while working in New York City. He matriculated at the Pennsylvania State University, from which he graduated with a Ph.D. in geochemistry in 1959.
At that time he joined Bell Laboratories, where he has continued his employment to the present, through the transition from AT&T to Lucent Technologies, and now has the rank of fellow. It was in 1974 that MacChesney and his colleagues at Bell Laboratories provided a detailed description of a commercially viable process, Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition (MCVD), for mass-producing high quality optical fiber. MacChesney remains engaged in the development of glass and its processing to economically produce next generation optical devices. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1985.


The Achievements

Charles Kao is credited for first publicly proposing the possibility of practical telecommunications using fibers. At the time, it was well known that information could be transmitted digitally, or in binary code. Also, the possibility of using light as the medium for such a transmission was considered, but various schemes to "guide" the propagation of light, for example, in gas filled tubes, demonstrated unacceptable signal losses. It was also considered that optical losses in glass could never be low enough for glass fibers to be practical as a transmission medium. It was against this backdrop that Kao made a very careful study of the possibility of dielectric fibers for telecommunications in 1965. His analysis of telecommunications systems requirements indicated that losses of 20 dB per kilometer would be acceptable. His analysis of losses due to absorption, scattering, and bending then led him to the conclusion that fused silica could meet the loss requirements necessary for a successful fiber waveguide. This seminal work provided the impetus for serious research and development throughout the world on glass fiber waveguides for communications.

Though Kao provided an analytical basis for the development of optical fibers, it was through the engineering talents of Robert Maurer that the first low-loss optical fiber was demonstrated in 1970. Maurer was motivated by Kao's early work, but based on his knowledge of glass, he concluded that modified fused silica (that is, a glass composed primarily of silica) was more promising than the multi-component glasses that were being investigated by others. When his work was revealed, it came as a great surprise to those who expected that fabrication of fibers from such a high melting material as silica would be impractical because of the imperfections introduced in the manufacturing process. Maurer and his team circumvented some of these problems by forming a fiber preform from the vapor phase on a mandrel. The mandrel was then removed and the glass collapsed and drawn into a fiber. The material was chemically graded to provide the low index of refraction cladding and the higher index core necessary for wave guiding, and this materials design is used today in all optical fiber for long-distance communication.

The remarkable announcement from Corning of a prototypical technique for optical fiber manufacture stimulated vigorous research and development work elsewhere. In 1974 John MacChesney disclosed the MCVD process for controllable and reproducible manufacture of low loss optical fibers. This innovation involved the synthesis of the light guiding part of the fiber based on surface deposition of an internally generated soot. The process solved simply and elegantly persistent problems of purity and trace water contamination, and allowed the complex doping profiles required for the optical waveguide effect to be readily achieved. Based on the elegance of the process and its public disclosure, the manufacture of fiber by MCVD was quickly introduced around the world and enabled the timely deployment of optical fiber. The first optical fiber communication system was installed by AT&T between Washington, D.C., and Boston, Mass., and commenced operation in 1981.

Additional information can be found on a separate page.