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From WIRED:
1960: Physicist Theodore Maiman uses a synthetic-ruby crystal to create the first laser.
Maiman began tinkering with electronic devices in his teens and even earned college money repairing appliances and radios. He was working at the Hughes Research Laboratories of the Hughes Aircraft company in Malibu, California, when he built the first working laser.
The laser is a device that produces monochromatic (all the same wavelength), coherent (all the waves in phase) light. Today they're used in eye surgery, dentistry, range-finding, astronomical measurement, and welding and other manufacturing uses. You'll find them at the heart of scientific instruments, communications networks, weapons, music systems and supermarket scanners. Lasers are everywhere.
The concept was already bouncing around in the research world in 1960. Arthur L. Schawlow of Bell Labs and Charles H. Townes of Columbia University had written a 1958 paper and patent application proposing an optical version of the maser, or microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.
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