Milestone-Nomination:IEEE Milestone for the Demonstration of the First Working Laser in Malibu, CA

In the space below the line, please enter your proposed citation in English, with title and text. Text absolutely limited to 70 words; 60 is preferable for aesthetic reasons. NOTE: The IEEE History Committee shall have final determination on the wording of the citation

Site of the World's First Working Laser

Please also include references and full citations, and include supporting material in an electronic format (GIF, JPEG, PNG, PDF, DOC) which can be made available on the IEEE History Center’s Web site to historians, scholars, students, and interested members of the public. All supporting materials must be in English, or if not in English, accompanied by an English translation. If you are including images or photographs as part of the supporting material, it is necessary that you list the copyright owner.

In the space below the line, please describe the historic significance of this work: its importance to the evolution of electrical and computer engineering and science and its importance to regional/national/international development.

Theodore Maiman developed the first working laser at Hughes Research Lab in 1960 and his paper describing the operation of the first laser

was published in Nature three months later. Since then, more than 55,000 patents involving the laser have been granted in the United States.

Today, lasers are used in countless areas of modern life. Some examples include telecommunications, medical diagnostics and surgery, manufacturing,

environmental sensing, basic scientific research, space exploration and entertainment. In the past, the IEEE has recognized the significance

of the laser as being one of the key technical achievements of the 20th century.

What features or characteristics set this work apart from similar achievements?

While there were no previous lasers before Maiman’s achievement, a predecessor of the laser, called the MASER, for "Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation", was independently developed in 1954 at Columbia University by Charles Townes and Jim Gordon and in Russia by Nicolay Basov and Alexsandr Prokhorov.

Soon after the maser, Schawlow at Bell Labs and Townes began thinking about ways to make infrared or visible light masers (so-called optical masers). While microwave cavities were well understood in the 1950’s, it was not clear how one might make an optical cavity that incorporated gain. In 1957 Schawlow and Townes eventually realized the solution was aligning two highly reflecting mirrors parallel to each other, forming a Fabry-Perot cavity, and placing the amplifying medium in between. Resonator side walls were not necessary as they were in the microwave case. They soon performed a detailed analysis of laser theory as well as requirements and published a seminal Physical Review paper in 1958.

Please attach a letter in English, or with English translation, from the site owner giving permission to place IEEE milestone plaque on the property.

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