In a recent study of early radio, Hugh G. J. Aitken (Amherst College) wrote: “We are inclined to think of invention as an act rather than a process because of the bias built into our patent laws. If property rights in a new discovery are to be secured, it is important to be able to establish priority in time…. This bias, however, should not be allowed to corrupt our historical interpretations…. [Invention is] a process with considerable duration in time, one to which many individuals contribute in a substantial way.” The birth of the laser was such a process. In this account, which I confine to events in the United States, I take the duration of the process to be the period between September 1957, when Charles H. Townes of Columbia University first wrote into his notebook his preliminary ideas for “a maser at optical frequencies,” and December 1960, when Ali Javan, William Bennett and Donald Herriott of Bell Telephone Laboratories operated the first continuous laser. The people I include will be those who had initiated substantial laser research programs before July 1960, when Theodore H. Maiman of Hughes Research Laboratories announced his ruby laser. I shall review the work of these scientists and address two questions: First, what drew these people into laser research? Second, why were they able to command the resources needed to pursue it?

1.
H. G. J. Aitken, The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900–1932, Princeton U.P., Princeton, N.J. (1985), p. 548.
See
T. S.
Kuhn
,
Science
136
,
760
(
1962
).
2.
C. H. Townes to R. Shelton, 9 June 1986, C. H. Townes papers.
3.
A. L.
Schawlow
,
C. H.
Townes
,
Phys. Rev.
112
,
1940
(
1958
).
4.
A. L. Schawlow, in Impact of Basic Research on Technology, B. Kursunoglu, A. Perlmutter, eds., Plenum Press, New York (1973), p. 128.
5.
‘Company Profile: TRG Incorporated,’ Microwave Journal, September 1961. R. Cushman, Aviation Week, 8 July 1957, p. 99. The quoted phrase is from the Aviation Week article.
6.
Interview with A. Javan by J. Hecht, Lasers & Applications, October 1985, p. 49.
7.
W. R.
Bennett
Jr.
,
Appl. Optics Suppl. on Optical Masers
1
,
39
(
1962
).
8.
J. H. Sanders to R. Kompfner, 10 January 1958 and 4 November 1958, and R. Kompfner to J. H. Sanders, 17 October 1958, R. Kompfner papers, box 7, folders 5 and 7, AT&T Bell Laboratories Archives.
9.
J. H.
Sanders
,
Phys. Rev. Lett.
3
,
86
(
1959
).
Memoir by G. D. Boyd for the Laser History Project, 1 May 1986.
10.
The Ann Arbor Conference on Optical Pumping, 15–18 June 1959, Research Library of the Westinghouse Research Center.
I.
Wieder
,
Rev. Sci. Instrum.
30
,
995
(
1959
).
11.
C. H. Townes, ed., Quantum Electronics: A Symposium, Columbia U.P., New York (1960).
12.
R. Sobel, IBM, Colossus in Transition, Times Books, New York (1981), p. 159.
13.
Industrial Research Laboratories of the United States…, 9th edition, 1950,
Bulletin of the National Research Council, no. 120, November 1950.
E. Mansfield, The Economics of Technological Change, W. W. Norton, New York (1968), p. 45.
14.
See M. B. W. Graham, in Research on Technological Innovation, Management and Policy, vol. 2, R. S. Rosenbloom, ed. (1985), p. 47.
15.
A. L. Schawlow, in Quantum Electronics: A Symposium, C. H. Townes, ed., Columbia U.P., New York (1960), p. 553.
16.
H. O. Stekler, The Structure and Performance of the Aerospace Industry, U. of Calif. P., Berkeley (1965).
R. Fernandez, Excess Profits: The Rise of United Technologies, Addison‐Wesley, Reading, Mass. (1983).
17.
T.
Maiman
,
Nature
187
,
493
(
1960
).
18.
R. J.
Collins
,
D. F.
Nelson
,
A. L.
Schawlow
,
W.
Bond
,
C. G. B.
Garrett
,
W.
Kaiser
,
Phys. Rev. Lett.
5
,
303
(
1960
).
19.
P. P.
Sorokin
,
IBM J. Res. Dev.
23
,
476
(
1979
).
P. P.
Sorokin
,
M.
Stevenson
,
Phys. Rev. Lett.
5
,
557
(
1960
).
P. P.
Sorokin
,
M.
Stevenson
,
IBM J. Res. Dev.
5
,
56
(
1961
).
20.
I.
Wieder
,
L. R.
Sarles
,
Phys. Rev. Lett.
6
,
95
(
1961
).
A. L.
Schawlow
,
G. E.
Devlin
,
Phys. Rev. Lett.
6
,
96
(
1961
).
21.
See D. J. Kevles, The Physicists, Knopf, New York (1978), and the articles by P. Forman, S. W. Leslie and A. A. Needell in Hist. Stud. Phys. Biol. Sci. 18:1 (1987).
22.
R. W.
Seidel
,
Hist. Stud. Phys. Biol. Sci.
18:1
,
112
(
1987
).
This content is only available via PDF.
You do not currently have access to this content.