Word: maser
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...appeared as a mere spot of red light flashed last week on a screen. But scientists of Bell Telephone Laboratories at Murray Hill. N.J. are sure their new gadget, called a maser. from which the light came, will lead to astonishing things. The waves of red light moved exactly in step; other light is helter-skelter. The waves kept to the same razor-edged frequency; other light is a mixture of frequencies. They formed a slender pencil beam that hardly spread out at all. If they had marched to the moon-240,000 miles-they would have covered less than...
...strange new light came from an optical maser (a word formed from the initials of Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). The optical maser is a long-predicted device that many famous laboratories have been racing to achieve, and may prove as important as the transistor, which, like the maser, is a solid-state device.* Existing masers generate or amplify radio microwaves with extreme efficiency, and they have revolutionized many branches of science, including accurate timekeeping and radio astronomy. But as soon as radio masers were in the bag, scientists began to dream about optical (visible light) masers...
Blood-Red Heart. Light and radio waves are both electromagnetic. But light waves are very much shorter and therefore have much higher frequency. They cannot be generated, tuned, filtered or amplified by the handy electronic apparatus used for radio waves. The new maser techniques promise, at least theoretically, to harness light waves just as radio waves have been harnessed...
...heart of the Bell optical maser is a rod of synthetic ruby ½ in. in diameter and 1½ in. long. It is chiefly aluminum oxide, but atoms of chromium replace a small amount of the aluminum, and these atoms cause the maser action...
...Maser Measure. Then, in 1954, Professor Charles H. Townes of Columbia University invented the ammonia maser. The maser is a device in which ammonia molecules are subjected to electrical excitation, giving off radio microwaves of accurately known frequency. If any sort of ether exists, these waves (which move at the same speed as light) should seem to change their frequency slightly when they are moving against a wind of ether caused by the earth's motion...