may 16, 1960 - Laser

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Theodore H. Maiman operated the first functioning laser on May 16, 1960, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. The device used a flashlamp-pumped synthetic ruby crystal to produce red laser light at 694 nanometers wavelength. However, it was only capable of pulsed operation due to its three-level pumping design. Later, Iranian physicist Ali Javan and others constructed the first gas laser using helium and neon for continuous operation in the infrared. Javan received the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 1993. In 1962, Robert N. Hall demonstrated the first semiconductor laser made of gallium arsenide, emitted in the near-infrared band at 850 nm. Nick Holonyak Jr. demonstrated the first semiconductor laser with visible emission, but it could only be used in pulsed-beam operation and when cooled to liquid nitrogen temperatures. In 1970, Zhores Alferov and Izuo Hayashi and Morton Panish independently developed room-temperature, continual-operation diode lasers using the heterojunction structure.

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