First Laser

The first laser was created in 1960, before they really had any understanding of the first laser's potential uses in medicine, communications, entertainment, or other scientific endeavors. Of course the first laser has led to something that we use every day now. If you go shopping, lasers are used to register your goods at the checkout. If you like to talk on the telephone, you can thank the first laser for bringing you the technology that makes much of it possible. If your vision was cloudy, you can thank the first laser for giving you the option of a safe eye surgery procedure that has rescued millions of cloudy eyes around the world (yep, that's the laser eye surgery we're talking about). It's hard to think of anything that wasn't aided by that scientific miracle back in 1960- the first laser.

Hair removal? Laser hair removal has that covered! Something to help comb that balding head back to life? The laser hair comb has you covered! Pimples on the face? Laser acne therapy is here to help! Worried about the bad guys hiding something along the road? The military laser system just saved another life! Worried about getting old and ugly? Look like you're 21 again with laser cosmetic surgery! Are you starting to realize what the first laser has done for us now? Good, read on!

Theodore Maiman made the first laser operate on 16 May 1960 at the Hughes Research Laboratory in California, by shining a high-power flash lamp on a ruby rod with silver-coated surfaces. He promptly submitted a short report of the work to the journal Physical Review Letters, but the editors turned it down. Some have thought this was because the Physical Review had announced that it was receiving too many papers on masers—the longer-wavelength predecessors of the laser—and had announced that any further papers would be turned down. Pasternack's reaction perhaps reflects the limited understanding at the time of the nature of lasers and their significance. Eager to get his work quickly into publication, Maiman then turned to Nature, usually even more selective than Physical Review Letters, where the paper was better received and published on 6 August.

Gordon Gould was the first person to use the word "laser". There is good reason to believe that Gordon Gould made the first laser. Gould was a doctoral student at Columbia University under Charles Townes, the inventor of the maser. Gordon Gould was inspired to build his optical laser starting in 1958. He failed to file for a patent his invention until 1959. As a result, Gordon Gould's patent was refused and his technology was exploited by others. It took until 1977 for Gordon Gould to finally win his patent war and receive his first patent for the laser.

A little over forty years ago, on Sunday, September 16, 1962, Dr. Gunther Fenner, a member of the team headed by Dr. Robert N. Hall at the General Electric Research Development Center in Schenectady, New York operated the first semiconductor diode . Within about thirty days, workers in three other laboratories in the USA soon independently demonstrated their own versions of the injection laser.

Today we celebrate the anniversary of the invention of the first laser. What an amazing journey it has been for this little known creation that mankind has grown to depend so much on. Without a doubt, the first laser was a miracle of sorts. It has opened up the future for us, and we all should be grateful for it. Long live the first laser!