In “Light Relief,” by Timothy Revell (NewScientist, 28 May 2016, paywall):
Bulky copper cables remained the status quo for over a century. And then along came optical fibres: glass cylinders the width of a human hair. Capable of transmitting information over vast distances using laser light, they enabled our modern connected world. Today, more than 2 billion kilometres of optical fibres criss-cross the globe, with more rolling off the production line at a rate nearly 20 times the speed of sound.
I would have been happier if he’d said 20 times the speed of light.
