Word: physicists
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...credit Albert Einstein with the origination in 1917 of the theory behind the laser [July 12]. The origin of the theory of the laser is credited to Columbia University Physicist Charles Townes, who conceived of the idea for the maser in 1951. The maser theory led directly to the laser theory in the late 1950s. If one is to search any farther back for a causative scientific theory, one must not be so shortsighted as to focus on 1917. The actual origin of the theory that made the laser possible must be credited to the Greek scientists Leucippus...
...what seemed almost a counterpoint to Paul's traditionalism, a Catholic prelate last week strongly hinted that the Vatican may be preparing to lift its condemnation of Galileo Galilei, the 17th century Italian physicist whom the Inquisition put under eight years' house arrest for contending that the earth rotates around the sun. During his "examination" in 1633, the aged scientist was scoffed at for challenging the wisdom of Ptolemy, the Egyptian who 1,500 years earlier had asserted that the earth was the center of the universe. And why would Joshua have commanded the sun to stand still...
Then for a while, optimism faded. Practical uses for the new source of light, which scientists christened laser (for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation), proved to be both scarce and elusive. Physicist Theodore Maiman, an early laser pioneer, described the new light source as "a solution seeking a problem." He was understandably impatient, but problem after problem has since been found- in ever increasing numbers. And the versatile laser is beginning to solve those problems in a manner that more than justifies the early, expansive claims. Lasers have become a $300 million-a-year business. As they...
Just two years later, Physicist Maiman used the Townes-Schawlow theory and built the world's first working laser, a small, hand-held instrument that shot out bursts of brilliant red light. Instead of a gas, Maiman's laser used a synthetic ruby crystal grown in a bath of molten aluminum oxide. In pure form, the aluminum oxide crystal is colorless and transparent. But a pinch of chromium added to the bath as an impurity gives the resulting crystals their characteristic ruby-red hue and supplies the chromium atoms (one for every 5,000 aluminum atoms) that cause...
...conventional radar altimeter would have indicated only the slope of the stadium; the laser picked out each row of seats, the one-foot space between each row, and even the slight depression of the running track at ground level. In no more than 20 years, Physicist Schawlow predicts, the laser will be a common tool "in the office, in the factory, and in the home, where it could be used for peeling potatoes." Or, he says, as he casually lights a book of matches with a hand-held laser, "it might even be used as a pilot light for kitchen...