Реферат: Волоконная оптика
Supercomputers of the future operating at faster speeds would make possible automatic translation of foreign language telephone calls (such as English to Japanese). Optical computers also would be the best way to transmit or process highly detailed visual information such as photographs or maps.
In an optical computer, switches will be able to process many bits of information at the same time—something electronic computers usually do not do. Because of this and their faster speed, optical computers would be far more powerful than the computers we have now.
With fiber optics, individual homes and businesses will have new, improved services available. The future will bring routine use of videophones that allow callers to see and hear each other. Telephone consoles may also be computer terminals. And there will be two-way television reception.
Fiber optic sensors will send information to automatic controls for lights, heat, air conditioners, appliances, or industrial machinery. Police and fire fighters will give better security to homes and businesses that have sensors connected directly by optical fibers to monitors at headquarters.
Someday you may work in an "intelligent" office building. The building itself may look much like other offices. But inside will be a world of difference.
The first of these office buildings is City Place in Hartford, Connecticut. Others that already have been built include Tower Forty-Nine in New York, LTV Center and Lincoln Plaza in Dallas, Texas, and Citicorp Center in San Francisco. By 1990, over 300 million square feet of "high I.Q." office space is expected to be in use.
An "intelligent" office building has fiber optic detectors that "see" if people are in a room before turning lights on or off. The detectors are connected to a main computer that regulates heat, ventilation, air conditioning, and lighting in each office of the building. Such automatic controls in large buildings can save as much as one-half on energy usage.
Just as important is that businesses in an "intelligent" office building share the benefits and costs of the most modern computer information networks, electronic mail, word processing, and telephone service. These services have been designed into the building's fiber optic system.
Security in "intelligent" office buildings also is improved. If, for example, a sensor detects a fire, its signals automatically ring alarms, call the fire department, activate sprinklers, exhaust smoke to the outside, and broadcast emergency instructions.
Fiber optics is lighting the way to an astonishing information age. Home computers will be "wired" to the world. Information from libraries and other sources will be available to us instantly. Banking and shopping will be done from home as well- Electronic newspapers, magazines, and mail will become commonplace. Telephones will be fitted with sockets to plug in computers, printers, television screens, and other information transmitting or receiving devices.
Away from Earth, new uses for fiber optics also will be found. In the 1990s, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will build a permanent space station. It will be in orbit about three hundred miles up. The space station will use on-board fiber optic systems for communications, computer processing, monitoring, and controls. The station also will establish factories in the near-zero gravity of space. Some of these factories will manufacture glass more flawless and free of impurities than can be made on Earth. This ultrapure glass will be brought back to Earth by the Space Shuttle to be made into even better optical fibers and other products.
Sometime in the next century, people will live in space colonies. They will process information and communicate using optical fibers and light. And they probably will find uses for fiber optics that hasn’t yet been imagined.
Alexander Graham Bell's brightest idea will have become a reality reaching far beyond his most fantastic dreams.