Charles K. Kao

I was trying to sell a dream … There was very little I could put in concrete to tell these people it was really real.

Charles Kuen Kao (4 November 1933 – 23 September 2018) was an engineer and a pioneer in the use of fiber optics in telecommunications. Kao is widely regarded as the "Father of Fiber Optic Communications". He was awarded half of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication".

Quotes

• If you really look at it, I was trying to sell a dream … There was very little I could put in concrete to tell these people it was really real.
  • In an interview, April 9, 1995, about his efforts at persuading telecommunications companies to use optical fibers, as quoted by Jeff Hecht (2004). City of light: the story of fiber optics. Oxford University Press. p. 117. ISBN 0195162552.