The programmers who created the original AutEx system, which ran on two huge Xerox Sigma 9 mainframes in lockstep mode (either one could take over if the other went down), have long since retired.
Hey, when I was in college, no one had a web site and when I first went to work for a huge healthcare company, they were among the first companies to have some futuristic mode of communication called email.
But crystal fibres push the range of single-mode wavelengths right into the visible part of the spectrum, opening up huge new tracts of wavelength for telecommunications.