Thanks to fibre-optics, it is now possible to illuminate many of the body's remotest organs and darkest orifices.

ECONOMIST: Medicinal light-swords

The newer upstarts are creating what amounts to an entirely new business: fibre-optics not copper, the Internet not normal telephony, dealing with customers not regulators.

ECONOMIST: Phone tie-ups

In just a little over a century, you already have the discovery of penicillin, the development of fibre-optics and the foundations of the internet and fourteen Nobel Laureates to your name.

BBC: Cameron's data speech in full

More than two full generations of Moore's law (which says that the number of transistors squeezed on to a computer chip doubles every 18 months) have passed since the tech bubble burst, as have more than three generations of fibre-optics communications technology.

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Professor Julian Jones of Heriot-Watt University also gets an OBE for his work on pioneering new types of fibre optics.

BBC: DNA pioneer is honoured