A BLUE plaque to mark the work of Harlow engineer and scientist George Hockham was unveiled on Friday morning.

Family and friends of George Hockham were joined by members of the Harlow Civic Society and Harlow MP Chris Vince in The Water Gardens.

The work of Sir Charles Kay has quite deservedly been lauded both in Harlow but all over the world. With George Hockham, less so.

But history can be like that.

Film of the ceremony is below.

History: Geoge Alfred Hockham FREng FIET (7 December 1938 – 16 September 2013) was a British electronics engineer who played a vital role in pioneering work on fibre optic communications at the Standard Telecommunication Laboratories in Harlow during the 1960s.

Both Charles Kao and George Hockham originally worked on the Microwave Long Haul Waveguide project at the labs in Harlow. Both men then transferred to the newly formed Optical Communications project. George used his expertise in the theoretical analysis of electromagnetic problems, especially microwave phenomena, to model the behaviour of optical fibre waveguides, performing calculations to establish the acceptable level of signal loss. His analysis suggested that a single mode optical dielectric waveguide should be feasible.

At the time, the imperfections in any prototype optical fibres were so great that their waveguiding properties could not be studied experimentally. He therefore investigated the potential impairments resulting from geometric imperfections in any future fibre. As the fibre was anticipated to have a core diameter of only a few microns, many believed that unavoidable variations in fibre diameter would make fibre communication impractical.

Courtesy of Optical Fibre History.