The Birth of the Laser

In a recent study of early radio, Hugh G. J. Aitken (Amherst College) wrote: “We are inclined to think of invention as an act rather than a process because of the bias built into our patent laws. If property rights in a new discovery are to be secured, it is important to be able to establish priority in time…. This bias, however, should not be allowed to corrupt our historical interpretations…. [Invention is] a process with considerable duration in time, one to which many individuals contribute in a substantial way.” The birth of the laser was such a process. In this account, which I confine to events in the United States, I take the duration of the process to be the period between September 1957, when Charles H. Townes of Columbia University first wrote into his notebook his preliminary ideas for “a maser at optical frequencies,” and December 1960, when Ali Javan, William Bennett and Donald Herriott of Bell Telephone Laboratories operated the first continuous laser. The people I include will be those who had initiated substantial laser research programs before July 1960, when Theodore H. Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories announced his ruby laser. I shall review the work of these scientists and address two questions: First, what drew these people into laser research? Second, why were they able to command the resources needed to pursue it?