maser

The laser turns 50

Fifty years ago Sunday, a Hughes Labs researcher named Theodore Maiman changed the world.

That day, Maiman became the first person on Earth to build a working laser, something that colleagues at a number of other companies and institutions had been feverishly trying to do for months or even years.

Coming out of World War II, explained Hughes Lab veteran and current Raytheon optics and lasers senior principal physicist Daniel Nieuwsma, many people were working with radar and were looking or ways to boost their power.

One method that was tried was using masers, or microwave amplification by stimulation of … Read more