• Question: How was a laser invented?

    Asked by redcherries to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 25 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by mads98, prilsy1601, hilla015, alfredfjones.
    • Photo: Tianfu Yao

      Tianfu Yao answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      The first laser is built by T. Maiman in 1960. He pumped a ruby rob by light from a flash tube. The laser emiting is at 694 nm (red color).

    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Invented by Einstein. He followed on from Planck’s ideas to come up with light quanta (and quantum physics). He also thought of stimulated emission and proposed the idea of a laser.

      Maiman may have built the first laser, but he didn’t come up with the idea.

    • Photo: Philippa Bird

      Philippa Bird answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Good question.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Yup. There was a Nobel prize awarded in the sixties to the scientists who did the ‘inventing’, google will tell you what their names are.

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