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and went to different parts of the control panel that seemed to acknowledge electrically the different color pulsing through the tube. Since the engineers evaluating the material at Roswell knew that each color of light had its own specific wavelength, they guessed that the frequency of the light wave activated a specific component of the spacecraft's control panel. But beyond that, the engineers and scientists were baffled. They couldn't even determine the spacecraft's power source, let alone what generated the power for the light tubes. And, the most amazing thing of all was that the filaments not only were flexible but still emitted light even when they were bent back and forth like a paper clip. How could light be made to bend? the engineers wondered. This was one of the physical mysteries of the Roswell craft that stayed hidden through the 1950s until one of the Signal Corps liaisons, who routinely briefed General Trudeau on the kinds of developments the Signal Corps was looking for, told us about experiments in optical fibers going on at Bell Labs. The technology was still very new, Hans Kohler told me during a private briefing in early 1962, but the promise of using light as a carrier of all kinds of signals through single filament glass strands was holding great promise. He explained that the premise of optical fibers was to have a filament of glass so fine and free of any impurities that nothing would impede the light beam moving along the center of the shaft. You also had to have a powerful light source at one end, he explained, to generate the signal, and | thought of the successful ruby laser that had been tested at Columbia University. | knew the EBEs had integrated the two technologies for their glass cable transmission inside the spacecraft. "But what makes the light bend?" | asked Professor Kohler, still incredulous that the aliens seem to have been able to defy one of our own laws of physics. "Is it some kind of an illusion?" "It's not a trick at all," the scientist explained. "It only looks like an illusion because the fibers are so fine, you can't see the different layers without a microscope. " He showed me, when | gave him the broken pieces of filament that | still had in my nut file, that each strand, which looked like one solid piece of material enclosing the circumference of a tiny tube, was actually double layered. When you looked down the center of the shaft you could see that around the outside of the filament was another layer of glass. Dr. Kohler explained that the individual light rays are reflected back toward the center by the layer of glass around the outside of the fiber so that the light can't escape. By running the glass fibers around corners and, in the case of the Roswell spacecraft, through the interior walls of the ship, the aliens were able to bend light and focus it just like you can direct the flow of water through a supply pipe. I'd never seen anything like that before in my life. Kohler explained that, just like lasers, the light can be made to carry any sort of signal : light, sound, and even digital information. | asked him how the EBEs might have used this type of technology. He suggested that all ship's communication, visual images, telemetry, and any amplified signals that the vehicles sent or received from other craft or from bases on the moon or on earth would use these glass fiber cables. "They seem to have an enormous capacity for carrying any kind of load, " he suggested. "And if a laser can amplify the signal, in their most refined form, these cables can carry a multiplicity of signals at the same time. " | was more than impressed. Even before asking him about the specific types of applications these might have for the army, | could see how they could make battlefield communications more secure because the signals would be stronger and less vulnerable to interference. Then Professor Kohler began suggesting the uses of these fibers to carry visual images photographed in tiny cameras from the weapons themselves to controlling devices at the launcher. "Imagine, " he said, "being able to fire a missile and actually see through the missile's eye where it's going. Imagine being able to lock onto a target visually and even as it tries to evade the missile, you can see it and make final adjustments. " And Kohler went on to describe the potential of how fiberoptics based sensors could someday keep track of enemy movements on the ground, carry data heavy visual signals from surveillance satellites, and pack very complicated multichannel communications systems into small spaces. "The whole space program is dependent upon carrying data, voice, and image, "he said. "But now, it takes too much space to store all the relays and switches and there's too much impedance to the signal. It limits what we can do ona mission. But imagine if we could adapt this technology to our own uses. " Then he looked me very squarely in the eye and said the very thing that | was thinking. "You know this is their technology. It's part of what enables them to have exploration missions. If it became our technology, too, we'd be able to, maybe we could keep up with them a little better. " Then he asked me for the army's commitment. He explained that some of our research laboratories were already looking into the properties of glass as a signal conductor and this would not have to be research that was started from complete scratch. Those kinds of start ups gave us concern at R&D because unless we covered 90 "There's no resistance to the signal, " he explained. "And you can fit more information on to the light beam."