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From: john larkin <jl@650pot.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: how the laser happened
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2024 16:58:48 -0700
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On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 22:44:50 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

>On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 11:32:56 -0700, john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 17:56:36 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On Fri, 21 Jun 2024 06:05:21 -0700, john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>There was a thread somewhere above about photon wave/particle duality.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>This is worth reading:
>>>>
>>>>https://www.amazon.com/How-Laser-Happened-Adventures-Scientist/dp/0195153766
>>>>
>>>>Einstein, in one of his fits of genius, predicted in around 1916 that
>>>>under the right conditions, a photon could pass by an excited atom and
>>>>the atom would kick in another photon, or add to the wave amplitude,
>>>>depending on how you feel about these things. He called it stimulated
>>>>emission. He also declared that the laws of thermodynamics made this
>>>>effect impossible to use in practical situations.
>>>>
>>>>In 1951, Charles Townes invented a work-around trick and built the
>>>>maser, a gaseous microwave oscillator. His superiors thought he was
>>>>crazy to dispute Einstein and almost threw him out of grad school, but
>>>>it worked.
>>>>
>>>>In 1960, Theodore Maiman at HRL made the first ruby laser, and Bell
>>>>Labs soonafter made a HeNe.
>>>>
>>>>What's interesting is that any decent neon sign shop could have built
>>>>a HeNe laser in 1920.
>>>>
>>>>HRL sounds like a very cool place, up in the hills above Malibu.
>>>
>>>Wasn't that where Jane Mansfield used to go out bathing?
>>>
>>
>>Keep your mind on electronics, young man.
>
>My apologies, John. A rather obscure British cultural reference which
>you wouldn't understand. Perhaps some British posters will recognize
>it; we'll see.....
>
>>
>>The Getty Museum is in Malibu. Go there if you can. Hearst Castle,
>>too, up the road a bit.
>>

I was in New Orleans, an EE student at Tulane, when Jane died on US
highway 90 in New Orleans East. It was ugly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayne_Mansfield#Death