• Question: What was the first laser used for and how has it changed from today?

    Asked by hawkh100m to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 2 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Philippa Bird

      Philippa Bird answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      I don’t know what the first laser was, but today there are just loads and loads more varieties. The nature of the light is probably very similar.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      The first laser was a Ruby laser, and I think it was mostly just used as a scientific curiosity. No one knew what to do with it.
      I don’t really know what the first thing that they used it for was, but I expect that fairly early on someone used it to burn stuff! 🙂
      Since then, they’re used for everything from reading CDs to cutting steel. There’s also all the stuff that the five os us up there ^ are doing with them.

    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 2 Jul 2012:

      Maiman made a Ruby (red) laser in 1960, which was the first visible light laser. As with all things that we don;t know what to do with, it was tried in medicine within the year (by an eye surgeon).

      What was Maiman’s laser used for? Mostly for posing in photographs I imagine.

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