Free-space Optical Communication - History

History

Optical communications, in various forms, have been used for thousands of years. The Ancient Greeks polished their shields to send signals during battle. In the modern era, semaphores and wireless solar telegraphs called heliographs were developed, using coded signals to communicate with their recipients.

In 1880 Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant Charles Sumner Tainter created the Photophone, at Bell's newly established Volta Laboratory in Washington, DC. Bell considered it his most important invention. The device allowed for the transmission of sound on a beam of light. On June 3, 1880, Bell conducted the world's first wireless telephone transmission between two buildings, some 213 meters apart. Its first practical use came in military communication systems many decades later.

Carl Zeiss Jena developed the Lichtsprechgerät 80 (direct translation: light-speak device) that the German army used in their World War II anti-aircraft defense units.

The invention of lasers in the 1960s revolutionized free space optics. Military organizations were particularly interested and boosted their development. However the technology lost market momentum when the installation of optical fiber networks for civilian uses was at its peak.

Many simple and inexpensive consumer remote controls use low-speed communication using infrared (IR) light. This is known as consumer IR technologies.