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Saturday, September 15, 2007

Who invented Laser?

A laser beam is an extremely intense narrow parallel beam of light. The word itself is derived from the words ‘light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation’.

Albert Einstein said in 1917 that it should be possible to make rays of light of the correct frequently be directed on an atom to make it release its energy in the form of light, but it was until 1958 that the right calculations were made by A.L. Schawlow and C.H. Townes to make this possible.
Schawlow and Townes’s first experiments failed, but by 1960 they had succeeded in generating the first laser beam, using a type of ruby.

Since then, the laser has been used in high-powered versions for cutting through metal, in delicate surgery such as in eye operations - and for putting on special effects at pop concerts and for street Christmas light displays!

4 comments:

luis September 29, 2009 at 11:12 PM  

Dr. Theodore Maiman invented the laser. Townes and others like him never produced a laser. Try to do it with his published works. Cannot be done. Never was done.

Laser September 15, 2011 at 7:12 AM  

@Luis I wanna give you a special thanks to mention the person who made laser...
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William Robin February 25, 2012 at 7:32 AM  

This is very descriptive and lovely blog and Great post. I really like the concept of this post and I feel that this is a very unique.
Thanks a lot for sharing. Keep sharing
such articles in future too.

JRK March 22, 2013 at 4:59 PM  

Unequivocally, Dr. Theodore (Ted) Maiman is well acknowledged as inventor of the laser in 1960. Schawlow and Townes wrote a paper in 1958 that proposed a design for a laser, but their design was defective and in fact never led to an operational laser. Maiman's design was entirely different and much simpler (he used a pink ruby, a substance that Schawlow said would "never work"). In the years since then, Townes, who is still alive in his late '90s, has sought to blur the truth and paraded at times as inventor of the laser. In fact, all the major scientific optical and physic organizations in 2010 celebrated LaserFest as the 50th anniversary of Maiman's invention of the laser--and celebrated Maiman himself, who had died three years earlier.
Maiman's history leading to his invention of the laser is chronicled in his autobiography, "Laser Odyssey." A fascinating read of how egos and false claims operate in the science community--as they do in most realms of human activity!

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Inventions, science, useful topics for students.