Lasers: Who Takes The Real Credit?

The light of the Laser has been with us for fifty years. The invention was a brilliant addition to an ever increasing technological world. People marvelled at this brilliant new technology and wondered about its possible uses.

Indeed it was an illuminating invention. Today our world finds lasers in many technological devices from simple pen pointers and CD players to medical applications right up to top secret weapon technologies being developed by the military world.

But who really gets the credit for this incredible device?

Most look towards the physicist Theodore H. Maiman as the man who invented the laser. But in actual fact the Laser (an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) was first put forward by the brilliant physicist Albert Einstein.

There were others also, who collectively were in a race to invent the laser and bring its brilliant light into our world.

For many who know of the laser would like to look towards Maiman as the man who “built” the first working laser. Maiman had been working with an assistant, Irnee D’Haenens in spring 1960. This was at the advanced Hughes Research Laboratories in California. Both he and his assistant were edging towards creating the first laser using a small pink ruby crystal and a powerful photographic flash lamp.

Maiman was against fellow scientists hoping to beat him to the finishing line with this new device. The theory was there but the practicality wasn’t. So Maiman saw himself pitted against his rivals in producing the world’s first practical laser.

He’d been at the problem for some nine months. Despite many other scientists dismissing his pink ruby crystal idea, Maiman kept at the task in hand as the others worked on their own ideas to produce intense and pencil thin beams of light all in perfect coherence. Maiman ignored their comments and kept faith in his idea and design and it wasn’t long before he made his incredible breakthrough that would be a major turning point in the scientific world.

Maiman didn’t work with anything fancy. If anything his parts were “second hand” and he set about to prove to his counterparts that lasing could be achieved with his ruby rod design.

The big day arrived for Maiman and his colleague on May 16, 1960. Maiman and D’Haenens pumped more voltage into a flash-lamp that was coiled around his pink ruby rod. Both watched their oscilloscope for signs of lasing and it wasn’t long before they saw a sharp upturn in intensity and then following it a sharp drop. To both men they then realised they had achieved their goal as they watched their little instrument tell them their hard work had paid off.