Oldest Laser Book
Been a while since I've posted an old laser pic, so here's one but with a twist. It's a copy of the proceedings from the Conference on Quantum Electronics - Resonance Phenomena held Shawanga Lodge in September of 1959. This copy was donated to my collection with a bunch of other early laser related artifacts by Professor Anthony Siegman shortly before his passing. He was on the Steering Committee for the conference. This is the conference that gathered pretty much all the first researchers trying to make a laser for the first time, including Ted Maiman who presented a paper on his compact X-band ruby maser.
Of particular interest to me are the comments included after Arthur Schawlow's presentation of his paper describing how a laser might be made to work (wherein he dismisses pink ruby as a possibility). Gordon Gould mentioned the possibility of pulsed excitation of a gas laser to generate "peak pulse powers as high as 1 megawatt". I don't know if Ted Maiman was in the room and heard his comment. It's been published that Charles Asawa was the one who suggested using a photographers flashlamp as the pump source after Maiman started considering pulsed excitation. The comment by Gould suggests pulsed excitation was in the minds of other workers as well at the time.
Anyway, this book is a real treasure in my vintage laser collection, especially with its distinguished provenance. And I think it's wonderful that they included the comments from audience members with the printed transcripts of the papers presented. Old lasers are just pieces of boring hardware without the stories that go along with them.
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