Information Technology Reference
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B.10.22. David Payne is director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of
Southampton in the United Kingdom. He was a student of Alec Gambling's and built one of the
world's first optical fiber drawing towers during his research for his PhD thesis. Payne later led
the team that discovered the erbium-doped fiber amplifier in 1987. With Emmanuel Desurvire
of Bell Labs, Payne was awarded the 1998 Benjamin Franklin Medal “for fundamental technical
contributions and leadership critical to the successful development of the Erbium-Doped Fiber
Amplifier and for the championship of this project.” B2
that part of the answer is the ability of university research groups to pursue
blue-sky research, scientific investigations without any obvious applications in
the real world:
The optical amplifier was developed with no [research] contract. It did not
have a proposal to do it, it did not have any milestones, it did not have any
deliverables, we did it completely on the site. And I think that you'll find
that most of the great developments in all areas of science are like that. So
the present move towards focused and managed research might well be
the wrong thing to be doing. 36
Key concepts
Store-and-forward networks
M
Centralized, hierarchical, and distributed networks
M
Circuit switching, message switching, and packet switching
M
Networking protocols and the ARPANET
M
File Transfer Protocol and Telnet
M
Wide area networks and email
M
Ethernet and local area networks
M
The Internet and the TCP/IP protocol
M
Optical fibers for communication
M
Erbium-doped fiber amplifier
M
“A communication system should make a positive contribution to the discovery
and arousal of interests.” F2
 
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