AT&T and its partners British Telecom and France Telecom set a target of 1988 for installing TAT-8, the first transatlantic fiber cable. More submarine fiber cables would follow. In 1982, MCI went looking for new technology to upgrade its long-distance phone network. Charles Kao of Standard Telephone and Cables (UK) reveals on how to make low loss fiber suitable for communications using an optical cladding over a pure glass core and removing impurities, plus ideally singlemode operation. (Awarded Nobel Prize in 2009) Ethernet was invented at Xerox Palo Alto. Three Corning scientists behind the company's invention of optical fiber in 1970 still had several more years of work to do. After a recession in the mid-1970s, the world economy grew vigorously in 1977 and 1978. Exploding global industries were hungry for communication – as was the U. Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.
