May 28 2010
The first laser itself stars in one of the latest video releases in the SPIE anniversary tribute series Advancing the Laser: 50 Years and Into the Future. The laser, invented and successfully fired for the first time on 16 May 1960 by Theodore Maiman, was reactivated by professor and inventor Dan Gelbart (Univ. of British Columbia) at a laser anniversary celebration in Vancouver, Canada, last week.
New videos are being launched each week in the well-received SPIE Advancing the Laser video series.
The complete series will include laser Nobel Laureates Charles Hard Townes, Nicolaas Bloembergen, and John Hall and other laser pioneers and leaders in current laser research and development talkinga bout new advances and the technology's history. To date, 25 videos have been completed.
An interview with Steven Jacques (Oregon Health and Science Univ.) launched today. Interviews with William Silfvast (CREOL, The College of Optics and Photonics, Univ. of Central Florida), author of Laser Fundamentals, and Gérard Mourou (Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées), inventor of chirped pulse amplification, will launch over the next few weeks.