A Popular
History of
the Laser
Stephen R. Wilk The starship Enterprise from Star Trek shoots laser beams. Model courtesy of Xhable and Google’s 3D warehouse. Composite by Marko Batulan
Long before Ted Maiman made the first ruby laser work, the concept of
directed light had already entered the public consciousness—through all
manner of sci-fi ray guns, “blasters,” and hand-held beams.
There are several distinguished histories of the laser, including Jeff
Hecht’s Beam: the Race to Make the Laser,
which was published by Oxford Uni-
versity Press in 2005,
Mario Bertolotti’s
History of the Laser
(Institute of Phys-
ics Press, 1999) and
Charles Townes’ How
the Laser Happened
(Oxford University
Press, 1999). Those
books delved into the
laser’s technical devel-
opment and the real-life drama behind
it. But I would like to explore something
else entirely—the way the laser was per-
ceived by the public.
The laser differed from other technical advances in that it was immediately
tangible to people. Many other scientific
breakthroughs took years to influence
pop culture because their manifestations were difficult to see. For example,
microwave amplification by stimulated
emission of radiation didn’t exactly
capture the public imagination, nor
did the concept of magnetic resonance.
Steve Wilk
In the 1964 James
Bond movie Goldfinger,
the villain has James
Bond spread-eagled
on a slab of gold with
a huge laser ominously
pointed down to bisect
both slab and Bond.
“Do you expect me to
talk, Goldfinger,” says
Bond. “No, Mr. Bond,
I expect you to die!”
Almost from its first operation, the laser
produced a clearly visible, directed beam
of light.
What’s more, there was a ready-
made analog that had been prominent
in pop culture for decades—the ray
gun. (See “How Ray Guns got their
Zap,” OPN 16, 16-18, March 2005).
Ted Maiman’s ruby laser-with its spiral
flashtube wrapped around the exotic and
expensive ruby core—even looked the
part. If Javan, Bennett and Herriott’s
original HeNe laser had been the first,
with its weak invisible infrared beam at
1. 15 µm and its resemblance to a neon
sign, people would have been much less
impressed. (In fact, the publicity photo
taken of Maiman behind his laser tube
looked much more impressive than the
actual device. The photographer sub-
stituted a longer spiral flashtube and a
longer ruby rod.)
14 | OPN Optics & Photonics News
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