Glass carries the internet in Veritasium's engineering deep dive
Henry van Dyck presents the fiber-optics story, with pioneer Donald Keck and a visit to a fiber manufacturing plant.
Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.
The Insane Engineering of Fiber Optics
What would viewers like Veritasium to explain next? Under "The Absurd Engineering Behind the Internet," a particularly popular answer is already waiting: submarine cables and the amplifiers that keep signals traveling beneath the sea.
There is plenty above water first. Presented by Henry van Dyck and directed by Sulli Yost, the week's most watched new upload traces the move from capacity-limited copper lines to glass fibers. Its chapters turn an apparently simple idea, sending information with light, into a succession of stubborn problems: scattering, absorption, impurities and, finally, manufacturing glass pure enough for the job. Donald Keck, a pioneer of low-loss optical fiber, is among the experts featured, alongside a tour of Prysmian's fiber plant.
The film has reached about 5.5 million views. Viewers are connecting its long engineering effort with the everyday impatience of waiting for a page to load; others recall Veritasium's blue LED documentary, another story about making a seemingly impractical technology work.
The other new upload, "What is edge dislocation?", uses bubbles to demonstrate an atomic crystal lattice. That gives the two-upload week a pleasing change of scale: the infrastructure carrying our messages, and the tiny structural details inside materials.
Across the channel, daily viewing is substantially above its usual pace, and subscribers grew over the week. Vsauce and Cleo Abram also had substantial weekly viewing among the nearby science channels, while SmarterEveryDay had a quieter stretch.
The internet film is Veritasium's most active upload right now, but the Enigma documentary has not gone dormant. Its exploration of cipher machinery, early codebreakers and Bletchley Park is approaching 20 million views and remains the channel's next strongest daily draw.
Published on Trari
Where next?
What viewers say
I would love to see a video about submarine cables and fiber amplifiers!!!! thx
@k.k.o.3989See it on YouTubeIt's funny how we get frustrated when our internet takes a few seconds to load, without realizing that behind that connection are scientists who spent years solving a problem many believed was impossible.
@FER2000-z3vSee it on YouTubeIt's crazy how it went from a theoretical/unsolvable problem, to a materials/plausible one, and finally into "just" a manufacturing/practical problem, from no one being interested to everyone racing to get there.
@Valery0p5See it on YouTube
2 more comments
32:49 Ofcourse we want a video on the amplifiers. Who wouldn't want more of veritasium?
@user.accountSee it on YouTubeYour whole documentary on who created the blue LED, how the blue LED was created, and why it was impossible to create is something that fascinates me the most. After watching that video, I thought that nothing is impossible. It just needs effort, determination, and pure love and passion for discovery, and it finally happens before our eyes.
@Dont_Search_Nuriyah_KhanSee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
The videos drawing views on Veritasium right now
- Channel
- Veritasium
- Subscribers
- 21,400,000 ▲ 100,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 24,612,166
- Videos published this week
- 2
- Video published
- October 12, 2026
- Video views so far
- 5,489,826
- Views on its first day
- 3,052,945
The numbers
Here is how Veritasium's uploads and audience moved over the week.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which material carries light in the fiber-optics story explored here?
The film explores how sufficiently pure glass made long-distance fiber-optic communication possible.





