During the late 80’s and early 90’s photonic switching became a very hot research topic in the telecommunication community. The power of the digital age was starting to be realized and there was a perceived need for large switching systems that could meet the high-bandwidth needs of the rapidly increasing digital services. The potential solutions to these problems were too complex for a single researcher and required large multidisciplinary teams. This, for me, was a major part of the excitement of the time. The team I was involved with included material scientists, solid state physicists, optical scientists and designers, circuit designers, network theorists, telecom switching system architects, and mechanical engineers. It took years to develop a common language that would allow us to communicate effectively, but in the end, all of us had a least a small glimpse of the big picture we were trying to pursue.
At this time our research community was still trying to understand the capabilities of “light interacting with matter” and how to use these properties to create new high performance digital systems. It seemed like there was always a new photonic material, a new device, or a new switching architecture that was being published, presented, and in some cases demonstrated at conferences. It was an exciting time when new ideas reigned supreme and the economics of making real products were a design consideration but not yet the driving force of the technology. By the middle 90’s this period of discovery for the photonic switching community had slowed down and it was time to enter the product development phase. Most of the strengths of the technology had become understood, developed, and found niches in the marketplace.
For many of us that were part of that “Camelot” period of photonic switching research, we can look back at our accomplishments with pride knowing that some of them made it into the products of our industry, some will become the foundation for other technologies, and some will just need to wait for another time.

Biography: H. Scott Hinton
H. Scott Hinton was born in Salt Lake City in 1951. He received a B.S.E.E. in 1981 at Brigham Young University and an M.S.E.E. at Purdue University in 1982. In 1981, he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in Naperville, IL as a Member of the Technical Staff. He was promoted to supervisor of the Photonic Switching Technologies group in 1985 and then Head of the Photonic Switching Department in 1989. From 1992 to 1994, he was the BNR-NT/ NSERC Chair in Photonic Systems at McGill University and from 1994 to 1999 he was the Hudson Moore Jr. Professor of Engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and from1999 to 2002 he was the Dean E. Ackers Distinguished Professor and the Chairman of University of Kansas Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. In 2002, he accepted the position as the Dean of the College of Engineering at Utah State University.  He has been very active in the scientific and engineering community where he has published over 35 journal articles 85 conference papers, and 12 patents. He has also been active in service to the professional commu­nity by serving in leadership positions for numerous technical conferences and workshops. His current research is focused on developing systems applications of synthetic biophotonic systems. He was an IEEE ­PHOTONICS ­SOCIETY Distinguished Lecturer for 1993–94, PHOTONICS SOCIETY (formerly LEOS) President for 2004–05, and is a fellow of both the IEEE and OSA.