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Science 15 October 1999:
Vol. 286. no. 5439, p. 401
DOI: 10.1126/science.286.5439.401e
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The 1999 Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the highest honor in engineering, will go to three fiberoptics pioneers, the National Academy of Engineering announced last week.

In the 1960s, Charles K. Kao, now CEO of Transtech Services Ltd. in Hong Kong, first conceived of communicating with light transmitted through glass rather than bulky copper wires. Robert D. Maurer of Corning Inc. in Corning, New York, then produced the first fused silica fiber that retained enough light signal to work for telecommunications. Finally, John B. MacChesney of Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, designed a process for creating pure optical fibers that consistently carry a high-quality signal.

Thanks to their work, the academy says, Earth is now wound with enough optical fiber to go to the moon and back 280 times.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)