Theodore Maiman demonstrates the first working laser
On this day · 16 May 1960
A finger-sized synthetic ruby, jolted by a strobe lamp, produced humanity's first burst of coherent light in a Malibu lab.
On May 16, 1960, physicist Theodore Maiman fired up an unlikely contraption at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, and produced the world’s first working laser. The active element was a small synthetic ruby rod with silvered ends, wrapped inside a helical xenon strobe lamp.
When the lamp flashed, the ruby emitted a narrow beam of deep-red light near 694 nanometers — coherent, monochromatic, and all in phase. Many physicists had dismissed ruby as a poor candidate, and Maiman, a junior researcher working on a budget of about $50,000, proved them wrong.
Theory became reality the moment the ruby flashed.
Maiman and Hughes announced the breakthrough at a New York press conference on July 7, 1960. The device was soon caricatured as “a solution looking for a problem,” yet lasers now drive everything from eye surgery and barcode scanners to fiber-optic networks and precision manufacturing.
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