Word: optic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Spinrad's estimate may be conservative. Corporations and national research organizations around the world are now spending billions of dollars to harness the new optical technology. The first fruits of their efforts are already apparent in such conveniences as fiber-optic telephone lines, laser printers, hot-selling compact disc players, credit cards bearing holograms, and laser price-tag scanners in supermarkets. Says Thomas Hartwick, head of TRW's Electro-Optics Research Center, near Los Angeles: "Every area that light touches will see technology advance by several generations...
...optical technology is moving rapidly into place. Communications companies have started to lay new transoceanic cables that can compete handily with space satellites. Fiber-optic links are allowing far-flung corporations to install networks of private video hookups and connect office buildings into a new kind of "optical city." Optical technology is providing sensitive nerve endings for devices like smoke detectors and blood analyzers. Meanwhile, scientists in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan are pushing hard toward a still much-in-the-future optical computer that uses photons rather than electrons for number-crunching efficiency. The massively powerful optical brain...
...optical competition is global. The U.S. spent at least $1 billion last year on optical research and development. But Japan spent roughly $3 billion, and is considered the international leader in most optic fields. Early breakthroughs in the optical-research battle have been scored in West Germany, Britain, France and Canada. The Soviet Union, according to a Central Intelligence Agency report, is conducting the largest optical computing research program of any nation, spending on that quest four to ten times as much as the U.S. "The importance to the U.S. economy of being competitive in world markets for optoelectronic products...
...Fiber-optic cables, hooked directly to consumers' homes, will eventually provide reception of almost limitless numbers of cable-TV channels and other more exotic services. For example, a joint venture of French communications companies has broken new ground by stringing fiber-optic cables to the homes of 1,500 telephone customers in the southern town of Biarritz and setting up an experimental two-way video system in which customers see one another while they chat...
...promising component of the system, which the Army originally balked at including, is the so-called FOG-M (for fiber-optic guided missile), a groundlaunched missile with a television camera in the nose. Steered toward its target by an operator who sees through a gossamer fiber-optic thread that spins out from behind as the missile flies, the weapon's 6-lb. warhead spells almost certain destruction to an enemy tank...