As India’s leading book publication house, Maneesh Media treats legacy preservation as an essential practice to honour visionary leaders and preserve the Indian diaspora’s journey to success.. With nearly 3,000 family legacies chronicled, we’ve learned that some lives do more than succeed; they quietly change the way the world operates.
One such personality is Dr. Narinder Singh Kapany, as featured in Jewels of Punjab (2017) who is technically the reason you can stream your favourite Netflix shows from anywhere on the globe. Also known as the ‘Father of Fibre Optics’ or the ‘Man Who Bent Light’, Kapany built the foundation for modern day Internet.
He was born nearly a century ago, on 31st October 1926, in Moga (Punjab) to Sundar Singh and Kundan Kaur. Life was simpler and slower at the time. You went out if you had to see someone. Plans were made ahead of time. And people relied on memory, books, and acquaintances rather than search engines. Singh grew up in an environment where curiosity became the first step towards extraordinary discoveries.
Bending Rules Was a Mindset
After his school days in Dehradun, Kapany earned a graduate degree from Agra University. It wasn’t until his Ph.D in Optics at Imperial College (London) that he began carving the skeleton of today’s Internet. However, his idea of changing primordial laws came way earlier.
In a quote to Economic Times, he once said,“When I was a high school student in Dehradun, based at the beautiful foothills of the Himalayas, it occurred to me that light need not travel in a straight line, that it could be bent. I carried the idea to college.”
Working alongside Rumford medalist Harold Hopkins, Dr. Kapany successfully transmitted a high quality image via a large bundle of fibres in 1953. His efforts gave birth to an entirely new field named ‘fibre optics,’ a term he coined in an article in 1960.
Wired For Everlasting Impact
Soon, Narinder Singh Kapany’s invention was being used to reliably conduct long-distance calls, specialised medical-imaging tasks, and broadcast premium events like the Olympics all over the world. Unlike copper, this technology was not limited by distance, speed, or corrosion. As 2000s arrived, optical fibre networks were established across cities and oceans to support the then-expected rise of the internet.
Today, fibre networks have become the backbone of the digital age. Not only do they have a submarine network, they are also directly connected to our homes, global data centres and major 5G infrastructures.
The Manifolds of The Father of Fibre Optics
Apart from being known as the ‘father of fibre optics,’ Dr. Kapany also added to industries like biomedical instrumentation, lasers, pollution monitoring and solar energy. He was a celebrated member of numerous scientific societies and had more than 120 patents to his name. While Fortune magazine labeled him as an “Unsung Hero” of the 20th century, Dr. Kapany’s work earned him Pravasi Bharatiya Samman (2004) and Padma Vibhushan (2021) alongside other prestigious honours. Many even believed that his revolutionary work deserved the Nobel Prize.
Despite his soaring achievements, Narinder Singh Kapany stayed connected to his roots through his philanthropic acts. He was the founding chairman of the Sikh Foundation for 50 years and also helped launch a programme dedicated to Sikh Studies at UC, Santa Barbara (1998). Dr. Kapany also donated from his collection of Sikh Art to the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in 1999, alongside a contribution of $500,000.
Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” This powerful quote by Warren Buffett perfectly captures the continued impact of the late Dr. Narinder Singh Kapany’s pioneering work in fibre optics. Maneesh Media believes his legacy deserves more reflection and preservation. As India’s leading diaspora book publication house, we strive to ensure that the lives of such extraordinary leaders never fall into the cracks of historical records.
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