Yu.E. Polsky, A.A. Potapov

The article explains that the model of optical communication lines has been demonstrated Gram Bell back in 1880! Bell worked on the use of the light beam in telecommunications. These works were described in the Russian magazine «Electricity» in 1880 (№ 1 (July), p. 153 - 155) based on notes from the «Revue scientifique». In this article about Bell experiments demonstrated a possiability of information transmission through a light beam (electromagnetic waves). Moreover, the transmission over the distances, greater than the distances obtained in the first experiments of A.Popov and G. Marconi. The principle of the light beam modulation was seted out. It fit, including, for the human speech transfering. The solution to the problem of a weak signal reception was proposed. It is proposed to enhance noise immunity by the information carried by a light beam converting first to the electrical signal and second using the Bell-s telephone for it-s amplifing. In this paper the structure of communication channel of information transmitting with the help of electromagnetic waves was pioneerely formed. This structure has become a classic. It was consisting of a generator (Volt-s arc), a modulator, a transmitting antenna (lens objective), a propagation medium, a receiving antenna (paraboloid), a receiver (selenium) and a terminal (phone). In addition, the possibility of using selenium as a detector was investigated in some detail. The harmonization of working area of the detector with a spatial configuration of the dropping light flux was investigated. This investigations are sufficiently relevant for the modern open lines of communication.