If you had to single out one nerveless , geeky technology as the preeminent sang-froid , geeky engineering , optical maser would be a fine choice . They ’ve enrich our gismo , confused our cat , and , for half a century , lit up our imagery .
On March 22 , 1960 , back when everybody had three name , Arthur Leonard Schawlow and Charles Hard Townes pick up the first optical maser patent . The event marked the beginning of along , contentious patent disputewith a physicist describe Gordon Gould who claimed that he , in fact , was the true artificer of the laser . But this is n’t about Schawlow or Townes or Gould or patents — it ’s about laser . And how awesome they are .
laser , of course , replaced needle as the predominant method of show orbitual media , find home in all of our CD , DVD , and Blu - Ray player . They won us over in the descriptor of optical maser pointers , which we immediately rule to be more effectual for terrorize neighbors and stick kittens than for directing attention to PowerPoint presentation . But lasers are now essential in a wide variety of field of operation , with scientists and soldiers and uncounted specialists in between depending on them every day .
Still , despite the widespread use of lasers today , there is something undeniably futuristic about them . As show by their office in such a wide mixed bag of science - fable favorites , we ’ve always been certain that no matter what the time to come make , lasers will somehow be part of it . In fact , the Death Star is a tell apart lesson in this respect , as if the only logical ending percentage point for the industrial military building complex and human beings ’s entropic tendency was a mammoth planet - ruin optical maser beam . ( Reagan’sStar state of war programwasn’t only life imitating art , but lifetime imitating optical maser . )
But I ’m not so pessimistic when it come to the future tense of lasers . Even at 50 , optical maser are being tested inexcitingnewapplicationsseeminglyevery day . foreman among them : elevating the cognitive process of nuke mosquito dead to aballetic fine art .
https://gizmodo.com/laser-powered-carbon-nanotube-speakers-5491968
So all at once now : felicitous birthday to you , glad birthday to you , happy birthday , dear lasers , happy natal day to “ pew . ” [ Wikipedia ]
Image creditThomas Ormston
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