STOCKHOLM (AP) — The next time you snap a digital photo and post it to Facebook, you can probably thank the three men who won the Nobel Prize in physics Tuesday.

They helped develop fiber-optic cable and invented the "eye" in digital cameras – technology that has given rise to film-free photography and high-speed Internet service, revolutionized communications and science, and utterly transformed the way we live, work and amuse ourselves.

Half the $1.4 million prize will go to Charles K. Kao, 75, for discovering how to transmit light signals long distance through hair-thin glass fibers. That led to fiber-optic communication networks that zip voice, video and high-speed Internet data worldwide in a split-second.

The other half will go to Willard S. Boyle, 85, and George E. Smith, 79, for opening the door to digital cameras by inventing a sensor that turns light into electrical signals.

These three Americans, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences declared, are "the masters of light" whose work "helped to shape the foundations of today's networked societies."

"What the wheel did for transport, the optical fiber did for telecommunications," said Richard Epworth, who worked with Kao at Standard Telecommunications Laboratories in Harlow, England, in the 1960s.

Here's one measure of the impact of Kao's work: The academy said that if all the glass fiber that now carries phone calls and data were wrapped around the world, it would span the globe more than 25,000 times.

Here's another measure: Just make a phone call across the Atlantic.

"It's dirt cheap. It used to be expensive," said David Farber, former chief technologist at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Fiber optics "revolutionized everything. ... It's one of those technologies that, when it happened, it just took off like wildfire," said Farber, a professor of computer science and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Kao concluded in 1966 that it would take fibers of highly purified glass to carry light over long distances. He recommended making them from a compound called fused silica. That material was hard to work with, but in 1970, researchers in the U.S. succeeded in making fibers.

Kao said Tuesday he never expected the Nobel despite all the advances that flowed from his research. A native of Shanghai, Kao has both American and British citizenship.

One popular use of optical fibers is sending digital photos, which were made possible by a 1969 invention by Boyle and Smith at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J. It is called a charge-coupled device, or CCD, and it is at the heart of most digital cameras, turning light into electrical signals. The CCD captures those signals in a way that makes it possible to create the pixel-by-pixel images displayed on a screen.

CCD technology is also used in some devices that doctors use to peer inside patients. And the CCD "has done as much to revolutionize the way astronomy is done as the telescope did," said U.S. Naval Observatory spokesman Geoff Chester. "It allows you to see deeper in the universe with the same equipment with a clarity that is unparalleled.

"Without a CCD there would not be anything like the Hubble Space Telescope and our current knowledge of the universe would be nowhere near what it is," Chester said.

Boyle, who also holds Canadian citizenship, said he is reminded of his work with Smith "when I go around these days and see everybody using our little digital cameras, everywhere."

But he said the biggest achievement resulting from his work was the transmission of images from Mars, showing features such as its red desert, taken by digital cameras in space.

Smith and his wife, Janet Murphy, were asleep in their Waretown, N.J., home Tuesday when the phone rang at 5:43 a.m. He couldn't get out of bed to answer it in time, and the call went to voice mail.

"It was a message in a Swedish accent, so we knew something was up," Murphy said.

Smith rushed to the Web site of the Nobel committee and saw that the announcement was to be made momentarily. The phone rang again shortly with the good news.

"It does do wonders for one's ego," Smith said. "People obviously like taking pictures. Look at all the cell phone cameras and cameras in your computer. That's using this technology."

• 2008: France's Albert Fert and Germany's Peter Gruenberg for work on the discovery of giant magnetoresistance.

• 2007: Yoichiro Nambu, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa for discoveries that help explain the behavior of the smallest particles of matter. .

• 2006: Americans John C. Mather and George F. Smoot for work examining the infancy of the universe, aiding the understanding of galaxies and stars and increasing support for the Big Bang theory of the beginning of the universe.

• 2005: Americans John L. Hall and Roy J. Glauber and German Theodor W. Haensch, for research explaining the behavior of light particles and determining the frequency of light with great precision.

• 2004: Americans David J. Gross, H. David Politzer and Frank Wilczeck, for their work in the discovery and exploration of strong force and quarks.

• 2003: Alexei A. Abrikosov, United States and Russia, Anthony J. Leggett, United States and Britain, and Vitaly L. Ginzburg, Russia, for their work concerning superconductivity and superfluidity in the field of quantum physics.

• 2002: Raymond Davis, Jr., United States, and Masatoshi Koshiba, Japan, for their research into cosmic neutrinos; and Riccardo Giacconi, United States, for pioneering contributions to astrophysics that led to the discovery of cosmic X-ray sources.

• 2001: Eric A. Cornell and Carl E. Wieman, United States, and U.S.-based researcher Wolfgang Ketterle of Germany for creating a new state of matter, an ultra-cold gas known as Bose-Einstein condensate.

• 2000: Zhores I. Alferov, Russia, U.S.-based researcher Herbert Kroemer of Germany, and Jack Kilby, United States, for work that helped create modern information technology.

• 1999: Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus J.G. Veltman, Netherlands, for their theoretical work on the structure and motion of subatomic particles.

• 1998: Robert B. Laughlin, United States, Horst L. Stoermer, Germany, and Daniel C. Tsui, United States, for discovering a new form of quantum fluid that gives more profound insights into the general inner structure and dynamics of matter.

• 1997: Steven Chu and William D. Phillips, United States, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, France, for their work in cooling and trapping atoms with laser light.

• 1996: David M. Lee, Douglas D. Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson, United States, for their discovery of superfluidity in helium-3.

• 1995: Martin L. Perl and Frederick Reines, United States, for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics.

• 1994: Bertram N. Brockhouse, Canada, and Clifford G. Shull, United States, for developing methods of neutron scattering techniques for studies of condensed matter.

• 1993: Russell A. Hulse and Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., United States, for finding a twin star: a binary pulsar that helped prove Einstein's theory of relativity.

• 1992: Georges Charpak, France, for developing particle detectors and the multiwire proportional chamber.

• 1991: Pierres-Gilles de Gennes, France, for developing systems for analyzing complex matter such as liquid crystals and polymers.

• 1990: Jerome I. Friedman and Henry W. Kendall, United States, and Richard E. Taylor, Canada, for investigating the scattering of electrons and refining models of quarks.

• 1989: Norman F. Ramsey and Hans G. Dehmelt, United States, and Wolfgang Paul, West Germany, for inventing methods used in atomic clocks and ion trap techniques.

• 1988: Leon M. Lederman, Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, United States, for developing the neutrino beam and discovering new types of neutrinos.

• 1987: J. Georg Bednorz, West Germany, and K. Alexander Muller, Switzerland, for work revealing superconductivity in ceramics.

• 1986: Ernst Ruska and Gerd Binnig, West Germany, and Heinrich Rohrer, Switzerland, for designing the electron and scanning tunneling microscopes.

• 1985: Klaus von Klitzing, West Germany, for discovering the quantized Hall effect.

• 1984: Carlo Rubbia, Italy, and Simon van der Meer, Netherlands, for contributions to the discovery of field particles involved in weak interaction.

• 1983: Subramanyan Chandrasekhar and William A. Fowler, United States, for theories explaining the chemical and physical process between stars and the universe.

• 1982: Kenneth G. Wilson, United States, for developing the theory of phase transitions.

• 1981: Nicolaas Bloembergen and Arthur L. Schawlow, United States, and Kai M. Siegbahn, Sweden, for contributing to the development of laser and electron spectroscopy.

• 1980: James Cronin and Val Fitch, United States, for discovering new aspects of neutral K-mesons.