MIT World: Engineering >>
This group of luminaries from the formative years of the laser expresses both wonder and delight at the astonishing ubiquity this technology has achieved in their lifetime. They recount their parts of a 50-year tale, and convey the excitement of scientific discovery and the pleasures of advancing knowledge in a new field.
Writer Jeff Hecht kicks off the celebration with a fast-paced, illustrated tour of laser technology. Although Einstein theorized early in the 20th century that photons could be excited to produce radiation, it was not until the 1950s that the race began in earnest to demonstrate this physics. Charles Townes and James Gordon came up with a microwave-based version of the technology, but it was graduate student Gordon Gould at Columbia who figured out it was possible to amplify visible light, says Hecht. Gould also coined the term LASER, for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
In May 1960, Theodore “Ted” Maiman cooked up the first actual device, using a synthetic ruby crystal inside a coiled flash lamp. Newspapers heralded the achievement with typical, Cold War hyperbole: “LA Man Builds Death Ray.” From that
This group of luminaries from the formative years of the laser expresses both wonder and delight at the astonishing ubiquity this technology has achieved in their lifetime. They recount their parts of a 50-year tale, and convey the excitement of scientific discovery and the pleasures of advancing knowledge in a new field.Writer Jeff Hecht kicks off the celebration with a fast-paced, illustrated tour of laser technology. Although Einstein theorized early in the 20th century that photons could be excited to produce radiation, it was not until the 1950s that the race began in earnest to demonstrate this physics. Charles Townes and James Gordon came up with a microwave-based version of the technology, but it was graduate student Gordon Gould at Columbia who figured out it was possible to amplify visible light, says Hecht. Gould also coined the term LASER, for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
In May 1960, Theodore “Ted” Maiman cooked up the first actual device, using a synthetic ruby crystal inside a coiled flash lamp. Newspapers heralded the achievement with typical, Cold War hyperbole: “LA Man Builds Death Ray.” From that
