Blow out 50 candles for the laser this weekend

This Sunday will mark the 50th anniversary of the laser. The world's first functional laser sent out its initial pulses on May 16th back in 1960, where Theodore Maiman (pictured above), showed off the technology at the Hughes Research Laboratories. While Maiman is known as the father of the laser for being the first to realize one, he actually wasn't awarded the patent for the technology — that went to Charles Townes and Arthur Schawlow of Bell Labs who, in 1958, published a paper detailing the work they themselves did on realizing a working laser without having built one. [Read more...]