Author: Tian Liang
On December 16, the official website of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology released a white paper on China's broadband development, which reads: By the end of September 2022, China's fiber-optic users amounted to 550 million, the number of which ranked first in the world.
The 550 million users have access to high-quality fiber-optic communications thanks to one person -- Zhao Zisen, the "father of China's fiber optics".
Just a day before the release of the white paper, Zhao Zisen died in Wuhan at the age of 90. China's communications sector has lost a flag.
Pulling China's first optical fiber next to a toilet
In 1974, when the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (MOTT) merged with the Wuhan Institute of Posts and Telecommunications (WIPT) to form the Wuhan Institute of Posts and Telecommunications Research (WIPTAR), Zhao Zisen was appointed deputy director of the Institute of Optical Communications (IOC).
Optical communication was a new and cutting-edge subject at that time.
At that time, resources were limited. Among the key development projects of Wuhan Academy of Posts and Sciences, millimeter wave was at the highest priority, while Zhao Zisen's optical communication project could only be "sidelined", and there was not even a formal laboratory. He can only be in the toilet side of a chemical cleaning room to engage in scientific research.
The hard conditions were nothing in front of him.
In 1966, he read the paper "Surface Waveguide for Optical Frequency Dielectric Fibers" written by the British-Chinese scientist Charles Kao, which wrote that if the loss of glass fibers was low enough, they could be used for communication. This was a treasure for him, and he was keenly aware that this was a favorable time for China to catch up with the world in communications technology.
After much research, he suggested to the leadership of the 528th plant that fiber-optic research be included in the plant's scientific research plan, which was opposed by a majority of people, including leaders of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and other departments.
A leader questioned: "How can glass wire communicate! Zhao Zisen you do not mess around, to spend tens of millions of dollars, you can take responsibility?"
According to Zhao Zisen's recollection, only a few leaders, such as Zhou Huasheng, then deputy director of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications Science and Technology Department, expressed support and said, "You can try.
Since it was a "try", the scale of the investment could be imagined. "I have very little money, only a few people, such as Huang Dingguo, Tang Renjie, Shi Qing and so on. No formal laboratory, we do chemical experiments in the laboratory building toilet side of the cleaning room." Zhao Zisen said.
Zhao Zisen spent his early years developing optical fibers at the Wuhan Postal Academy.
In order to reduce the loss of light energy in optical fibers, the quartz used to make optical fibers can't be ordinary natural quartz, but synthetic ultra-pure quartz.
Without any reference, the purification work was extremely difficult, and Zhao Zisen could only rely on himself to feel his way forward step by step. It was not uncommon for people to get injured during experiments.
One experiment, he accidentally sprayed silicon tetrachloride liquid into his right eye. Due to the concentration of chlorine released was too high, he suffered severe pain in his eye and fainted. Colleagues rushed him to the hospital.
When he arrived at the hospital, the doctors froze, having never seen this kind of situation, and would not treat it. Still under the advice of Zhao Zisen, the doctor used distilled water to rinse his eyes, and then play hangnail anti-inflammatory. The eyes just a little bit, not yet healed, Zhao Zisen ran back to do experiments.
Because of the poor conditions, Zhao Zisen team initially used alcohol lamps to heat the purification, no reaction, and then changed to graphite furnace heating. It took 12 graphite furnaces to get some white powder.
Everyone was happy, thinking it was quartz. But it turned out to be silica gel with water after chemical analysis.
There were dozens of such failures.
Zhao Zisen let his colleagues to Shanghai and other places of the quartz factory visits, learned that melting quartz need 1400 ℃ to 2000 ℃ high temperature, and to use hydroxide flame. Accordingly, he used a modified in-tube chemical deposition method to make ultrapure quartz.
After a hundred years of practice, in 1976, China's first practical, short-wavelength and step-type quartz optical fiber was finally born.
"At that time in the 'Cultural Revolution' period, isolated from the world, although we are not the world's first, but did not rely on any foreign technology, developed a communications fiber." Zhao Zisen recalled.
-Wuhan Postal Academy.
The next year, the "Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications Industry Exhibition", Zhao Zisen over the self-developed optical fiber, with the Shanghai Institute of Optical Machinery to provide the laser as a light source, with their own design of the communication system, the successful transmission of television signals.
The day of the preview, Minister of Posts and Telecommunications Zhong Fuxiang and Vice Premier Gu Mu to visit. Seeing the demonstration of fiber-optic communication, Zhong Fuxiang was amazed. He offered to personally remove and put back the optical fiber to verify whether the fiber-optic transmission of TV signals was real.
Zhao Zisen told him that it would take an hour of careful alignment because the fine-tuning mechanism used was too crude, and that this could be done if Minister Zhong came next week. A week later, Zhong Fuxiang really came, and as expected. Since then, fiber-optic communication has become a key project of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
"Zhao Zisen, how many people do you want? How much money do you want?" The president of the Wuhan Postal Academy asked.
"The whole academy is not enough." Zhao Zisen replied.
"Why?"
"Because we need to establish a fiber optic cable production workshop factory; to establish the Institute of Optical Devices, the development and production of lasers; to expand the original scale of research and production of communication machines"
The hospital leadership listened to Zhao Zisen's advice, down the other projects, and go all out to engage in fiber optic communications. This laid the foundation for China to catch up with the world's advanced level.
Today, optical fibers form the communication network, Internet and TV network, and fiber-optic communication is a necessity for people's life and work.
Four universities in three years
Born in February 1932 in Shanghai, Zhao Zisen's father was a salesman in a department store.
He was born prematurely to a mother who was only seven months pregnant. Because of his premature birth and the poor medical environment, the young Zhao Zisen was short, weak, and often sick, "once because of typhoid fever, almost died twice!"
In 1937, the Japanese army fully invaded China and soon came to Shanghai. With eight children, the parents fled under fire to the British Concession, where they rented a small attic and had to sleep on the floor at night.
The brutality of the Japanese army and the dislocation brought by the war was so y engraved in Zhao Zisen's mind that he aspired to save his country through science as a teenager.
Mother was sold as a maid to a family whose head was a doctor. It was here that his mother felt the importance of knowledge, and later painstakingly paid for each of her children to go to school.
The frail and sickly Zhao Zisen took to playing soccer in order to strengthen his body. As long as the summer vacation, he played from the morning until the evening, and slowly developed a strong body.
At school, he enjoys science, especially math, and is often praised by teachers for his good thinking. He is also very hands-on and likes to make model airplanes.
Childhood Zhao Zisen making a model airplane.
He also took part in a model airplane competition in Shanghai and won the second prize. The mayor of Shanghai, Wu Guozhen, personally gave him the award.
Because of his family's heavy burden, he couldn't afford to buy toys, so he made his own. when he was in his late teens, he took his younger brother and spent several days making a radio.
Because of his over-enthusiasm for science and engineering, he was biased, often failing to pass English, history and geography, and barely made it to an ordinary high school in the midterm exams.
After entering high school, Zhao Zisen realized that he couldn't study at his own pace, and that he had to study hard even if he didn't like the classes.
When he went to college in 1949, he didn't dare to enroll in the cheaper but more difficult science and engineering departments of public universities, nor did he enroll in private universities with high tuition fees, and eventually enrolled in the College of Agriculture at Zhejiang University.
However, he still couldn't get interested in subjects such as botany and cytology, so he simply dropped out and retook the college entrance exam. This time, he was admitted to the biology department of Fudan University. Unexpectedly, the courses were similar and he dropped out again.
With the support of his mother, he decided to pay his own way to the Department of Electrical Engineering at the private Tatung University. Driven by interest, he got better and better grades here.
In 1952, during the national faculty reorganization, private universities were abolished, and the Department of Electrical Engineering of Tatung University was incorporated into the Department of Telecommunications of Shanghai Jiaotong University.
In September 1954, Zhao Zisen was assigned as a teacher at Wuhan Telecommunication School, a junior college. Many of the young teachers who were assigned to the school together at that time thought it was easy to teach at the junior college and used to play cards and chess, while Zhao Zisen still insisted on studying every day in addition to his work.
He felt that the knowledge he had learned in college was too shallow to keep up with the times. In order to bridge the gap, he re-taught himself the Soviet textbooks of calculus, principles of electrical engineering, principles of radio, etc. He also took remedial courses in English, Russian, Japanese and other foreign languages, and memorized a concise English dictionary in just three months.
In 1958, the Wuhan Telecommunications School was upgraded to the Wuhan Institute of Posts and Telecommunications and began enrolling undergraduates. Zhao Zisen also went from being a junior college teacher to a college teacher.
While teaching, he still enjoyed scientific research. At a national exhibition held in 1959, he won the grand prize for a computer he made that could solve 3rd order differential equations.
Later, the Wuhan Institute of Posts and Telecommunications was abolished and changed to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications Factory 528. The leadership of the factory saw and remembered Zhao Zisen's talent.
In 1971, the atmospheric laser communication project, which was originally set up at the Beijing Institute of Posts and Telecommunications, was transferred to the 528th factory, and the factory leaders let Zhao Zisen take the lead in this project.
He moved the antenna to the roof, corrected the antenna, and then moved the entire laser atmospheric communication equipment to the highest building in Wuhan at that time - the water tower of the Liudu Bridge and the Institute of Water Transportation Engineering of a high-rise, to realize the "atmospheric transmission of laser communications", the effective transmission distance from 8 meters rapidly increased. Effective transmission distance from 8 meters rapidly increased to 10 kilometers.
Zhao Zisen further thought: atmospheric transmission of optical communication can not realize all-weather communication, rain, snow, fog and other weather, the device will fail, we must seek "alternatives".
He learned that the United States and the United Kingdom and other countries have been studying fiber-optic communication technology. After in-depth preparation, he decided to carry out research on fiber-optic communications, and in August 1974 put forward the quartz optical fiber communication technology program, which led to the birth of China's first optical fiber.
Advocating the construction of China's Optical Valley
In 1983, Zhao Zisen was appointed chief engineer of the Wuhan Academy of Postal Sciences, and was promoted to vice president two years later. 1995, he was elected academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
He has devoted his life to optical communication.
The optical fiber in long-distance transmission often occurs accidental breakage, he does not remember how many times from sleep was woken up, rushed to dozens of kilometers away to find the break point, repair the optical fiber. Even if he is already a hospital leader, he is also on call, each time with more than 20 colleagues crammed into an eight-person van to run around.
With this kind of energy, how can things not work?
In the 1980s, he and his colleagues worked together to develop, design, install, and open China's first fiber-optic cable municipal communications project.
In the 1990s, he led the team to complete the world's longest aerial fiber-optic cable project at the time - "Beijing-Han-Guangzhou project", the length of 3,000 kilometers.
In May 2000, he and 25 academicians and experts from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering jointly submitted a proposal to the state to establish the "China Optical Valley" in Wuhan. After the approval the following year, Wuhan built the country's first national optoelectronics industry base, "Wuhan - China's Optical Valley" has since become famous all over the world.
In 2018, Wuhan Postal Science Academy developed an optical fiber, one can achieve 6.75 billion pairs of people talking at the same time.
Today, Wuhan Academy of Posts and Sciences has developed into the central enterprise China Information Technology Group. China has become the world's third largest optical communication technology powerhouse after the United States and Japan, with a market share of more than half of the world.
In the later years of his life, Zhao Zisen spent most of his free time reviewing the most advanced fiber-optic communication technologies at home and abroad, and constantly kept abreast of new trends. He also cautioned young people to keep up with the times and lead the way.
Ma Weidong, assistant general manager of Wuhan Optical Xun Technology Co., Ltd, a subsidiary of CITIC, told Globalist that he graduated with a master's degree in 1998, and learned that Academician Zhao Zisen's work and scientific research were geared toward industrial applications and the country's major needs, and that this was exactly where his aspirations lay, and so he enrolled as a doctoral candidate for Zhao's doctoral degree.
Zhao Zisen told his students many times that Wuhan Academy of Posts and Telecommunications is the national team in the field of optical communications in our country, and we must put down our roots to engage in cutting-edge research, so that we can have international competitiveness, and we will not be necked.
"When you do research with him, you can always feel this patriotic sentiment." Ma Weidong said.
According to Ma Weidong, there were times when other companies offered several times the salary to poach him, which he refused.
"Taking the research work we do on optoelectronic chips and device technology as an example, I can continue to study high-end products in depth here to enhance core competitiveness for the country. In other companies may be able to get a high salary, but may have to do something else, more important to the short-term winnings, and the products are mainly low-end and medium-end. This is not what I want, nor what my mentor wants." Ma Weidong said.
As Zhao Zisen said before he died, young people must work hard to learn new technologies and dare to innovate, so that the new China, in its new era, can continue to prosper and develop.
Director Producer: Lv Hong
Producer: Zhang Jiankui
Editor-in-Chief: Xu Chenjing
Editor: Su Rui