Happy Birthday, Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation

Courtesy of Wikipedia:

"The first working laser was demonstrated on May 16, 1960 by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories."

There was major scientific ferment in my childhood about lasers.  Lots of it at Bell Labs, which engaged in a prolonged patent fight over the focused light beam.  Of course there was lots of nerd energy expended before and after on its demonstration and application.  Wiki "laser" and you can read it all.  For some reason, I was fascinated by lasers as a kid.  I remember watching "Goldfinger" and wincing as James Bond nearly lost his dangly bits to the latest ray gun, a laser.  Details here.  Maybe that was the first time it popped into my consciousness.  Maybe I had heard of it before.  But somewhere in the early-mid-60's, the science of light was big on my baby-nerd radar screen.

Some of the first lasers were dependent on crystal amplification with a ruby.  Ruby is my birth stone.  I had a Junior Rock Hound Kit at home -- I don't know what the educational purpose was, but there were samples of feldspar and quartz and jasper and so on, each neatly contained in its own precisely labeled square on a cardboard grid.  There was a sample of some stone with tiny, non-gem quality ruby inclusions.  That might have captured my attention.  I remember holding up the ruby to sunlight and standing back warily.  Or maybe it was the advance-placement geek-certified science summer school class before 5th grade taught by a Bell Labs nerd.  We both wore coke-bottle thick glasses, he had a crew cut and the first pocket protector I'd ever seen -- I immediately wanted one.  There I first saw fiber optics (this was maybe 1965) -- wow, those little plastic fibers glowed in the dark.  Cool.  I asked him why a succession of mirrors couldn't work to save light forever.  He glowed with pleasure at his superiority, then explained why not.  Turns out mirrors are terribly inefficient, and the speed of light is too fast.  So much for my ideas on secret weapons.  But mirrors were key to laser technology, and he complimented my grasp of the subject.  I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.

Then he treated us, in the elementary school auditorium, to a boffo showcase of the latest Bell Labs neat stuff.  First he demonstrated a -- hold on to your hats -- push button phone.  He challenged poor little Susan Campell to a race.  He gave her the phone we all knew and had at home.  (We didn't have a cell in our backpacks.  This was the dark ages, kiddies.  We were still waiting for our wrist-radio like Dick Tracy.)  In case you weren't born yet, our phone looked like this:

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The Bell guy had buttons.  Poor Susan had to dial while he pushed buttons.  Fixed race.  Of course he won.  I'm sitting there thinking, "Brave new world, saving 30 seconds on phoning home.  Big woop.  He beat a 10-year-old kid.  This is a totally useless invention."

But then he brought out the big guns, literally.  He had an actual laser in his bag of tricks.  He set up a device the size of a sewing machine.  We all shifted uneasily in our seats.  This madman could blow us all up.  That thing for sure would suck the oxygen out of the air, burn down the school, hey, maybe that isn't such a bad idea.  He actually proposed to fire it at the wall.  I waited for Armageddon to let loose, a mushroom cloud over R.D. White Elementary.  With many wizardly flourishes, he fiddled with the controls and pressed buttons and we heard a mild "whoomp."  Right below the school clock a 2-inch diameter pale patch appeared, all the dust and muck of the ages was blown off the institutional green.  We all "ooooohed" appreciatively.  Every school assembly thereafter, my eyes were drawn to that patch.  It faded, new dust and muck adhering over time, but I could still see it years later.

OK, so I didn't grow up to be a scientist, I never developed any application for my fascination, this isn't one of those magic turning point stories.  But still.  At about the same age, I used to quiz my mother's mother (born in 1892) about her encounters with new technologies.  She told me about the first time she saw an automobile, about her first movie (and then she went on to be a silent film actress), and how scared she had been of technological marvels I accepted so casually.

By 1969, lasers were first being used medically.  My aunt, who came to live with our family due to failing health from life-long diabetes, had the broken blood vessels in her eyes experimentally treated with a laser at UCLA.  I expected her to come home with gory dead eye sockets like "Night Of The Living Dead."  Instead, her vision improved marginally for a while.  Ooooooh.  It was still early days.

Now, of course, we all have many lasers in our homes, in DVD and CD players and lots else.  A few years ago, I gave away my coke-bottle glasses after Lasik surgery.  I should have done it years ago.  I had little skin cancers and age spots blown off last year by laser at my dermatologist's office. Lasers are now tame helpers, not the herald of the End of Days.

I don't really have a point here, it's not one of those stories.  I just wanted to mark the 48th birthday of something that was as memorable as my granny's first automobile.  Oooooh.  Brave new world.

Comments

[Houston Bridges]

Our maternal grandmothers were born only four years apart? My god, we're practically twins! As a child, I too was fascinated by my grandmother's tales of the first time she saw a car, rode in an aeroplane, rode in an escalator. Now, she wasn't a hillbilly ... well, yes she was, actually. A rose by any name would smell as sweet. She was rural.

Good story about nothing in particular, other than the occasional laser.