In 1947, a devvice called the transistor was invernted in Bell Laboratories, the research and development arm of AT&T (ow Lucent Technologies). That invention helped to establish entire branches of industry, including consumer electronics, computing, and titans such as Sony and Microsoft. Now , the changes taking place in our optical technologies are so significant that they have been compared with the development of the transistor.// Optical fibers form a network that interconnects the globe. These fibers are used to transmit our phone calls, faxes, TV programs, e-mail, data and many other types of information. Future systems will provide mutiples of this capacity. with so many people being able to sare a single fiber, the charges for the indididual will drop drastically. In effect, we are pushing capacity towards infinity and dropping costs to close to zero.//