Implementation of Optical Buffers
As light cannot be frozen, an optical buffer is made of optical fibers, and is generally much larger than a RAM chip of comparable capacity. A single fiber can serve as a buffer. However, a set of more than one is usually used. A possibility, for example, is to choose a certain length for the smallest fiber, and then let the second, third... have lengths . Another typical example is to use a single loop, in which the data circulates a variable number of times.
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—For the State of New Hampshire, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)