The laser has proved one of the most protean devices of our century. A mere thirty years after its invention, it already serves us in uses as varied as surgical instruments, "smart" bombs, printers, audio devices, telephone communication, cloth cutting, machining, and chemical research. In this book Joan Lisa Bromberg brings a historian's broad perspective to bear on the formative years of laser research in the United States. She demonstrates that, as lasers have become a means to probe the structure and changes of the physical universe, so the history of laser research constitutes a probe...
The laser has proved one of the most protean devices of our century. A mere thirty years after its invention, it already serves us in uses as varie...