1answer.
Ask question
Login Signup
Ask question
All categories
  • English
  • Mathematics
  • Social Studies
  • Business
  • History
  • Health
  • Geography
  • Biology
  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Computers and Technology
  • Arts
  • World Languages
  • Spanish
  • French
  • German
  • Advanced Placement (AP)
  • SAT
  • Medicine
  • Law
  • Engineering
bazaltina [42]
2 years ago
7

Explain what led to the invention of lasers

Computers and Technology
1 answer:
Brilliant_brown [7]2 years ago
3 0

Answer:

The laser is an outgrowth of a suggestion made by Albert Einstein in 1916 that under the proper circumstances atoms could release excess energy as light—either spontaneously or when stimulated by light.

Explanation:

The laser is an outgrowth of a suggestion made by Albert Einstein in 1916 that under the proper circumstances atoms could release excess energy as light—either spontaneously or when stimulated by light. German physicist Rudolf Walther Ladenburg first observed stimulated emission in 1928, although at the time it seemed to have no practical use.

In 1951 Charles H. Townes, then at Columbia University in New York City, thought of a way to generate stimulated emission at microwave frequencies. At the end of 1953, he demonstrated a working device that focused “excited” (see below Energy levels and stimulated emissions) ammonia molecules in a resonant microwave cavity, where they emitted a pure microwave frequency. Townes named the device a maser, for “microwave amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation.” Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Prokhorov and Nikolay Gennadiyevich Basov of the P.N. Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow independently described the theory of maser operation. For their work all three shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physics.

An intense burst of maser research followed in the mid-1950s, but masers found only a limited range of applications as low-noise microwave amplifiers and atomic clocks. In 1957 Townes proposed to his brother-in-law and former postdoctoral student at Columbia University, Arthur L. Schawlow (then at Bell Laboratories), that they try to extend maser action to the much shorter wavelengths of infrared or visible light. Townes also had discussions with a graduate student at Columbia University, Gordon Gould, who quickly developed his own laser ideas. Townes and Schawlow published their ideas for an “optical maser” in a seminal paper in the December 15, 1958, issue of Physical Review. Meanwhile, Gould coined the word laser and wrote a patent application. Whether Townes or Gould should be credited as the “inventor” of the laser thus became a matter of intense debate and led to years of litigation. Eventually, Gould received a series of four patents starting in 1977 that earned him millions of dollars in royalties.

The Townes-Schawlow proposal led several groups to try building a laser. The Gould proposal became the basis of a classified military contract. Success came first to Theodore H. Maiman, who took a different approach at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. He fired bright pulses from a photographer’s flash lamp to excite chromium atoms in a crystal of synthetic ruby, a material he chose because he had studied carefully how it absorbed and emitted light and calculated that it should work as a laser. On May 16, 1960, he produced red pulses from a ruby rod about the size of a fingertip. In December 1960 Ali Javan, William Bennett, Jr., and Donald Herriott at Bell Labs built the first gas laser, which generated a continuous infrared beam from a mixture of helium and neon. In 1962 Robert N. Hall and coworkers at the General Electric Research and Development Center in Schenectady, New York, made the first semiconductor laser.

While lasers quickly caught the public imagination, perhaps for their similarity to the “heat rays” of science fiction, practical applications took years to develop. A young physicist named Irnee D’Haenens, while working with Maiman on the ruby laser, joked that the device was “a solution looking for a problem,” and the line lingered in the laser community for many years. Townes and Schawlow had expected laser beams to be used in basic research and to send signals through air or space. Gould envisioned more powerful beams capable of cutting and drilling many materials. A key early success came in late 1963 when two researchers at the University of Michigan, Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks, used lasers to make the first three-dimensional holograms (see holography).

Helium-neon lasers were the first lasers with broad commercial applications. Because they could be adjusted to generate a visible red beam instead of an infrared beam, they found immediate use projecting straight lines for alignment, surveying, construction, and irrigation. Soon eye surgeons were using pulses from ruby lasers to weld detached retinas back in place without cutting into the eye. The first large-scale application for lasers was the laser scanner for automated checkout in supermarkets, which was developed in the mid-1970s and became common a few years later. Compact disc audio players and laser printers for personal computers soon followed.

You might be interested in
Options to open,save,and print a document are found on which of the following tabs? A.File B.Home C. Design D. Layout
maria [59]

Those options are usually under the "File" tab.

3 0
3 years ago
Read 2 more answers
14 Copy a picture of a crane on the next page. Do not trace them. Make a freehand sketch. (2) 2 Look at the placed where the Mar
PtichkaEL [24]

Answer:

Hope it helps.have a look.

3 0
2 years ago
opearating system protection refers to a mechanism for controling access by programs, processes, or users to both system and use
Alekssandra [29.7K]

Answer:

The operating system must by the use of policies define access to and the use of all computer resources.

Policies are usually defined during the design of the system. These are usually default in settings. Others are defined and or modified during installation of the addon and or third-party software.

Computer Security Policies are used to exact the nature and use of an organisations computers systems. IT Policies are divided into 5 classes namely:

  1. General Policies
  2. Server Policies
  3. VPN Policies
  4. Back-Up Policies
  5. Firewall Access and Configuration Policies

Cheers!

5 0
3 years ago
The World Health Organization decided that addiction to video games is considered a mental health disorder. Do you agree or disa
Blababa [14]

Answer:

I disagree and I will tell you why because there was study based on video games and seniors and the theory was that they play games to keep there minds active. I will give you an example let's say you were in a situation and you learned how to make or create something from playing video games, in closeur video games can help us in problems

8 0
3 years ago
All of the following are helpful test taking strategies EXCEPT_______________.
guajiro [1.7K]
Complete The test as quickly as possible
6 0
2 years ago
Read 2 more answers
Other questions:
  • What type of elements are bridges exposed to yearly
    13·2 answers
  • Write a program that prompts the user to enter the weight of a person in kilograms and outputs the equivalent weight in pounds.
    8·1 answer
  • The set of rules for how computers talk to one another
    6·1 answer
  • Josephine is in the process of creating ads within her Standard Display campaign. She finds that there are two main ad formats t
    5·1 answer
  • The architecture in which the database resides on a back-end machine and users access data through their workstations is
    5·2 answers
  • What are the steps to creating a blank database? Use the drop-down menus to complete them.
    9·1 answer
  • _________ can be used to provide access control, confidentiality, data origin authentication, connectionless integrity, rejectio
    12·1 answer
  • What is output by the following line of code?
    15·1 answer
  • How does your ability to correctly count change affect the impression the customer has of you?
    8·1 answer
  • What are the two most common input and output devices?
    6·2 answers
Add answer
Login
Not registered? Fast signup
Signup
Login Signup
Ask question!