First Laser Ignites: Theodore Maiman Sparks a New Era

A burst of deep red light from a synthetic ruby crystal changed the world on May 16, 1960. Theodore Maiman, working at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California, fired the first functioning laser by wrapping a flashtube around a ruby rod and pulsing it with high-intensity light. The ruby's chromium atoms absorbed the energy and emitted a coherent beam of light at 694 nanometers, a wavelength in the deep red spectrum. The pulse lasted less than a millisecond, but it solved a problem that had occupied physicists for decades. Albert Einstein had predicted the theoretical basis for stimulated emission in 1917, and Charles Townes had built the first maser (using microwaves rather than visible light) in 1954. But producing a working optical laser proved enormously difficult. Multiple research teams raced toward the goal, including groups at Bell Labs, Columbia University, and the Technical Research Group. Maiman, working with a small team and modest budget, beat them all by choosing ruby as his lasing medium when most physicists believed it unsuitable. The physics community initially dismissed the laser as "a solution looking for a problem." No one could articulate a practical application for a beam of coherent light. Bell Labs researcher Irnee D'Haenens joked that it was a solution in search of a problem. Within a few years, that joke looked spectacularly shortsighted as applications proliferated across medicine, communications, manufacturing, and military technology. Lasers now read barcodes, perform eye surgery, cut industrial steel, transmit data through fiber optic cables, guide precision munitions, and measure distances to the Moon with centimeter accuracy. The global laser market exceeds $20 billion annually. Maiman's ruby laser sits in a museum, but its descendants are embedded in virtually every sector of the modern economy. Few inventions have so thoroughly vindicated the pursuit of basic science without a predetermined commercial application.