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From: Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: how the laser happened
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2024 17:56:36 +0100
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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?


>
>https://www.hrl.com/
>
>
>Some details:
>
>https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/200312/history.cfm