E.T. Phone Home

One of my guilty pleasures is watching UFO conspiracy shows on TV. One night an episode of "UFO Files" really captured my interest. It was a segment describing how after the 1947 Roswell crash the military called in scientists from Bell Labs to examine the wreckage so they could reverse engineer alien technologies. According to the story this is where us lowly humans came up with lasers, Kevlar, the transistor, night vision goggles and more importantly optical fiber telecommunications. I have linked in the segment to this blog if you are really interested in viewing it. I will discuss my thoughts on this but first a quick lesson on optical telecommunications. UFO Files segment


By 1947 fiber optics was not a new idea. Alexander Graham Bell was actually the first to transmit voice over light in 1880. His invention was called the "photophone" however it was not as cost effective as his previous invention, the "telephone". But it proved sound could travel on light.

Work on optic fibers continued over time, mostly for medical imaging purposes. The inherent electromagnetic problems that come with transporting voice over copper wires pointed our way towards continued fiber optics development. By 1970 three physicists working for Corning Labs came up with usable fiber for transmitting voice and data. Hello Conspiracy Theorists. Invented by Corning Labs, not Bell Labs.

The first commercial fiber network was in place by 1975. By 1986 Sprint installed the first national "all fiber optic" network. If you are old enough you may remember the "you can hear a pin drop" commercials. Initially fiber optics worked with a pulse of light representing a digital "1" and no beam represented "0". We were soon able to break up the light spectrum and send 1's and 0's on the spectrum which increased the bandwidth capabilities exponentially. This multiplexing protocol is called WDM or "wave-length division multiplexing".

The current record on optical fiber is the multiplexing of 155 channels with each channel carrying a bandwidth of 100Gbps over a 7000km optical fiber. This is an amazing amount of bandwidth and the possibilities of a bandwidth limit for fiber optics can currently not be estimated. It will keep growing for centuries to come.

Now to the fun stuff. We as the Human Beings of this Earth are simply not capable of coming up with new technologies on our own, some would have you believe. This takes us back to 1993 when the X-Files came out and became a popular TV show. UFO conspiracies meant big money and people want to believe. So in 1996 a former intelligence agent for the military named Philip J. Corso released the book The Day After Roswell. In a nutshell he claims that an extraterrestrial craft crashed in Roswell in July 1947. The military secretly whisked away the craft for storage in Area 51. The U.S. Government assembled a team of scientists from various military contractors to examine the wreckage. Inside they found glass strands instead of wires. When they sent light beams thru one end of the fibers they would project on the other end. The scientists from Bell Labs then took this concept back to Murray Hills and fiber optic technologies were born. Philip Corso passed away in 1998 taking his secrets with him.

Now my personal opinion on this. Seems amazing to me that I cannot even drop a drinking glass without it shattering, yet glass strands the size of hair were able to survive a horrific crash. I once heard Dr. Carl Sagan address the alien issue in very logical and believable terms. Essentially he stated that in a Universe as vast as ours the possibility of intelligent life is out there. However should this life exist and is looking for other life why would they search out our tiny planet, revolving around our tiny Sun, in our tiny solar system, in our tiny galaxy? In other words if you are hunting for elephants you wouldn't go to an iceberg, that is the last place you would expect to find one.

Something did crash in Roswell in 1947. It was an experimental metallic spy balloon we were developing to spy on Russia during the cold war. This is pretty well documented. A post World War II leap in technology is not unfathomable. Many of the greatest minds of the time emigrated to the United States because of Nazi persecution. Does the name Albert Einstein ring a bell here? If you put together great scientific minds than great technologies are bound to come out of this collaboration. By 1947 the transistor, lasers and fiber optics were already being developed. Mankind is capable of wonderful things and remarkable ideas on our own. We built Stonehenge without aliens, we built the Pyramids without aliens, we developed the Aztec calendar without aliens and we certainly created fiber optic telecommunications without the help of aliens.

African-American History Month Spotlight: Granville T. Woods

Everyone loves an underdog story and I am no exception. The story of how Granville T. Woods rose from leaving school at the age of 10 to become one of the early pioneers of telecommunications and one of the greatest inventors of all time is nothing short of inspirational.

Granville T. Woods was born in Columbus, OH in 1856. Though Ohio was a free state he was still subject to "black laws" which were special laws set aside for African-Americans which perpetuated segregation. Granville was allowed to attend public schools, but only until the age of 10. Then he had to go out and work.


He had a very curious mind and was naturally inclined toward how machinery and electricity worked. The railroad was a natural fit. He also worked as a machinist, blacksmith, fireman, steelworker and boat engineer, but the railroad was his love. Realizing the value of education he would teach himself and take private lessons after work. Because African-Americans were not allowed to check out books from libraries he would have his friends get books for him. Eventually he earned a degree in mechanical and electric engineering by attending night classes after work. However being an African-American in a college at that time there are no records on which school he attended.


With his brother he then started the Woods Railway Telegraph Company. Granville's first patent was awarded for an improved telephone transmitter (the mouthpiece you speak into). However due to patent laws at the time the patent was assigned to Alexander Graham Bell. A few months later Granville's second patent was awarded for the "telegraphony". The telegraphony allowed voice transmissions to travel over a telegraph line. An important telecommunications invention indeed as it was first to allow voice and data transmissions over the same wire. This gave people the ability to send personal telegraph transmissions without having to know Morse code. The telegraphony was so successful that Alexander Graham Bell purchased the patent and with the money Granville T. Woods was financially able to spend full time inventing.


Turning his mind back to the railroad he came up with his next important invention, the "Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph". A large problem at the time was that trains had no way of communicating with each other or the dispatch office. This created an obviously dangerous situation. Granville's invention took care of this problem by allowing trains to communicate with each other using the copper wire which was laid along rail road tracks. Dispatch offices then knew the location of trains and what tracks they were on. In the process this invention went on to save potentially hundreds, if not thousands of human lives.

In his lifetime Granville Woods went on to claim 60 patents which earned him the nickname of "The Black Edison". His invention of the electric third rail is still in use today with many railroads and subways around the world. Another of his great inventions was the Electric Trolley which allowed trolley cars to be powered by overhead electric lines instead of being pulled by horses. We still see these in use in downtown San Francisco and Philadelphia. Most of his inventions revolved around railway safety however he also invented the egg incubator. Granville T. Woods passed away in 1910 a very successful man.


After researching this man's life I am beginning to wonder whether we should start referring to Edison as "The White Granville Woods".