i gotta say, watching you splice that 16mm single perf is bringing back a lot of pleasant (and some unpleasant) memories of late night editing sessions in film school. Struggling with a flatbed that was a Warner Brothers "surplus special" dating back to the early fifties, constantly having to fiddle with the timecode reader and praying that I'd have a cut ready for screening the next morning. Ah, those were the days.
Oh, they didn't know that cats love chasing that bright red spot? It's a pity. What I like about this video is that it brought the modern science and technology to the masses without dumping too much information or complicated formulae. Getting your knowledge across without being boring, overly simplistic or incomprehensible is an art in itself.
Back then, lasers weren't quite portable enough to be carried around and waved erratically. Of course, fiberoptics could eventually be used to direct the beam, but mishaps were more prone to ignite or vaporize bits of the cat. (Sounds like a great Itchy & Scratchy episode!)
I used to use a HeNe gas laser - mounted on a box with a powersupply that plugged into the wall -- as a cat toy! (cheap diode lasers were not a thing then)
I think my favourite part is the optimism in the thought "Lasers could even be used to carry messages to the most distant galaxies" :) I mean, I'm not saying one _can't_ do that, but I'd probably start with M31 in Andromeda and see if anyone replies within the next 5 million years before investing in the comms network beyond that point.
@@CraigBrideau But then again I'm sad that it took so long to get to this point. And what about the plethora of suggestions they made for the application of laser? Do we have 3D TV today? No, we gave up once more some years ago!
Funny enough, fiber optics had actually already been experimented with since the turn of the century. It just took a decade or two after the laser's invention for scientists to purify and dope glass in such a way as to marry the two technologies into something so useful for communications.
Fantastic film Fran. I've always considered the development of the laser right up there with the transistor/semiconductor as the most influential inventions of the 20th century.
They mention GaAs semiconductor lasers, but not fiber optics, but then guessed right about space-to-space direct laser links like Musk's Starlink satellites.
@@Dee_Just_Dee Still, the tubes were only for protection, the bends would happen only in the relay stations while the tubes would have had to be 100% straight
Just to clarify, an LED is not a laser, it is a light emitting diode. What they mentioned was a 'semiconductor laser' which is known today as a Laser Diode. The main difference btwn LED and LD, can be understood by reviewing the acronym LASER, the S stands for Stimulated, where as in an LED (light emitting diode) light is amplified via "Spontaneous" emission, not "Stimulated" emission. In short, photons in a laser cavity stimulate excited electrons to release a photon of the same wavelength, and frequency as itself, whereas spontaneous emission occurs with no such stimuli, simply the result of many excited electrons falling back to lower energy levels at will according to when there is room for them in the lower energy states. So, an LED cannot produce coherent light of a single frequency. I.e., a red LED is emitting a range of red frequencies.
@@RusticRockMusic There's even an in-between device known as a superluminescent diode (SLD), which is a gain medium like a laser diode, but without the reflective regeneration of a true laser. The light emitted by an SLD is an interesting hybrid of the behavior of an LD and LED.
One application they didn't mention was the laser gyroscope (or ring laser gyroscope). When this film was made, I was on the Navy ship USS Norton Sound which tested many things. One of the things they started testing in 1966 was the laser gyroscope. It is commonly used today. It still has the same curvature of the earth issue as mechanical gyroscopes where if you could sail around the earth on a great circle the gyroscope would thing the ship's pitch rotated 360 degrees end over end. On the Norton Sound, this was corrected by linking to the dead reckoning system and a computer was involved which I believe was a Univac 1219.
Back in the 80's our BBC science series called "Horizons" did a programme on Lasers called "A solution looking for a problem". Little did we know just how dependant we would become on them!
@@Tommyinoz1971 Probably best not to rely on memory for dates. But then I couldn't find it doing a web search, so that is going to be as near as I can get :-)
Back in the early 70s the Bell Labs geeks gave us a live assembly about lasers in grammar school. I grew up a few miles from the Labs. Which is what all the locals called the campus. What an insane asylum that place was.
I remember on of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures where they said that when the laser was introduced, it was referred to as "A solution looking for a problem" and this would have been in the 80s so we definitely had uses for lasers by then.
Hi Fran. Great film. I had the pleasure and distinctly good fortune of being the partner and assistant to the inventor and developer of the first IBM PC based laser light show system in the late 1980s. We also learned to reprocess large frame gas lasers using a hi-vacuum system he built. Good times.
As a Star Wars-obsessed kid around 1981, I saw a show at the laser lab at the Ontario Science Centre. They did the balloon-in-balloon demo, a balloon full of propane, laser to the moon, all that stuff. I was fascinated and read all the National Geographic and Popular Science stuff about lasers. Wanted my own ruby to make one. So it's incredible to me that I can buy a laser at the store for a dollar just to play with the cats.
I took a tour of Texas Instruments facility in Dallas around then and saw a ruby laser blast a hole part way through a penny. I was fortunate enough to be given that penny and carried it for many years with a tiny hole in Lincolns head. (We were all way too impressed by the feat to attach any kind of symbolism to the placement of the hole!)
I loved that video! Back in the early 90s my brother asked me if I’d like to go on a “service call” with him. Turns out he was one of the leading LASER technicians in the Country (probably the World) and I had just been invited in. Twenty-six years later I’ve worked on some fantastic LASERS, created some cool electronic devices, and even patented a new optical device for using LASERS and X-rays together. Thanks so much for the video, it was basically the same thing my brother taught me the first few weeks I worked with him! ❤️
I started my senior year of high school in 1968. Our science teacher arranged for someone from Bell labs to talk to our class about lasers. He demonstrated how a laser can be used for communication. He had an AM radio tuned to the local radio station and sent a modulated, low-watt laser beam across the room to a laser receiver that received the modulated laser signal and converted it back to the sound from the radio. He let students use their hands to block the beam to interrupt the radio broadcast.
I actually had a chance to hear Maiman speak in person a while back; he had plenty of good stories. Really interesting to hear the perspective from those early days.
Fun and interesting, Fran! Thanks for saving this vintage film! And I just remembered, somewhere in one of my junk boxes I have a very old Hughes Aerospace laser tube. I really should do something with it.
When I was 12, my dad brought me to the open-house in the engineering department of a local university. In one of the rooms, a graduate student was demonstrating lasers. (Keep in mind that I had just seen "Goldfinger" in the theatre, where tied-up Sean Connery asks super-villain Auric Goldfinger, "Do you expect me to talk?", as a laser slowly moves across a platform to Bond's crotch, and Goldfinger responds "No Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.".) The student defocused the laser and got me to wave my hand in front of the unfocused beam. He then asked me to step back, focused the beam and zapped a hole through a couple of razor blades. It was then and there that I made up my mind that THIS was where I wanted to be. I thought universities were magical places. I never went into engineering like my dad wanted, but became a research psychologist. The honour fell to our older son who went into engineering in that very department. But I did continue to build pedals and pickups for nearly 40 years, once I was old enough.
That's a seriously cool demonstration! In elementary school we were learning about the planets and telescopes and stuff, and the janitor brought in his own telescope in the daytime to show a few of our classes. At first we were like "What the heck can you see in the sky during the daytime with a telescope?", but then he proceeded to point it at the sun, and cut a black trash bag in half using the beam coming out the eyepiece, like a laser. He told us to never point telescopes at the sun or that's what can happen to your eyes. Lol, thanks Mr. Janitor...
I had to send this to Ben from Applied Science because I think there might be some useful stuff in here for his ruby laser project haha, amazing find Fran
I may have just learnt more specifics of exactly ‘what’ a “L.a.s.e.r.” is &, correct principles of operation (& the history thereof), explained in laymen terms within this fantastically made, reasonably short & concise vintage science teaching ad film, then all previous sources I received thru education of the 70’s & 80’s. Thanks Fran for lighting my Laser of intrigue today! 💡📽🎬🧠👀🗣
I enjoyed watching this film. I remember when LASERs were new and I always wanted one of my own to experiment with. Today you can practically buy penlight lasers in some gas stations.
Interesting film! It reminded me of a 10 y.o. boy in the early seventies, that, after reading in the "Energy" book from the Time-Life Science Library that a laser was made by using a mirrored ruby rod excited by a light bulb, remembered that the wrist-watch he was given had 23 rubies (bearings) and he decided to remove all of them, in order to fuse them with quartz crystal (easily found where he used to live), to make a small ruby rod and assemble his own laser! It never worked, but that didn't stop him from experimenting in every area he sparked interest in, driven by his insanely inquisitive mind...
An amazing film, THANK YOU for sharing this! I remember about 50 years ago reading about the possibility of using lasers for dental work. Too bad they still haven't gotten there yet. On a totally different note, I would love to find a copy of a film I saw in high school back in 1977 where they were talking about modern medical marvels. There was one IIRC who invented the shunt for hydrocephalitics, and he was a mechanic or machinist of some sort. His terminology was most interesting to say the least. He was commenting on the effectiveness of the shunt on infants and he said something like, "Because of this, the babies can now be... salvaged." The entire class burst out laughing.
"Dr. Strangelove" alert at 4:56. Nixie alert at 14:10! The person with the garden hose has much better discipline than myself. I love animals, but that dog would have got a little wet if I had the hose! Thanks Fran for bringing these great videos to us.
Good to hear Dr. Maiman's name mentioned as one of the inventors of the laser. He seems to have been neglected in recent popular historical articles. While it is important to credit theoreticians with inventions, somebody always needs to be able to build the damn thing.
They sure liked Superman with that intro. I was 13 and remember well all the promise of the future with all that new technology coming. Auto driving cars, flying cars, laser guns!
The first laser I saw was from the Edmund Scientific company in 1974. It was part of a school demo. They had fiber optics in the '60s...I think they go back to the '30s. Wonder why they went with those vacuum pipes? I suppose less light loss?
Keep in mind that you're looking at it from historical perspective with all the facts. Many inventions were technically "invented" about 20-30 years before their common knowledge and use. It looks like use of fiber optics as communications were first invented just 3 years before this video and knowledge of it may have been classified as their use in NASAs Apollo cameras was classified.
I always looked forward to the next Edmund Scientific catalog in the mail! Pretty sure they pioneered some of the first tabletop commercial lasers offered to the public.
Every time he says Ruby Rod I think of Milla Jovovich for some reason. Also thank you Fran for this. These movies are awesome. Interesting to compare the predicted uses then to the actual uses today.
Thanks, Fran. My dad worked on the optics for Hughes for lasers and the satellite image systems (spinning optics) way back in the late 50s and very early 60s. I'd like to find some of these old Hughes patents (after he passed away, we discovered D size rolled up engineering prints of one of the systems in a tube buried in his workshop - he must've taken it home with him decades ago, unfortunately, the cleaners tossed it in the dumpster along with priceless stuff from that era in a box -😢).
This whole video reminded me of the funny video's you'd get in Fallout 4 about what makes you S.P.E.C.I.A.L but the mish-mashed music at the end was so spot on I thought it was a Bethesda production. Had me laughing so good. It was a really interesting video on Lasers though. It's so trippy to see what people in the 60's thought of technological uses for laser light before we had things like LASER Cutters and Laser Pointers or PC Laser Mice. Or more importantly the Laser Interlink communication satellites put up by SpaceX the other day for Starlink. We really are living in the future.
great film...I saw a ruby laser demo at the NBS in Boulder, a few years ago-after much excitement and planning, my friend and I were going to build one!-after collecting a few things for the flashtube circuit, we learned that the ruby crystal was going to cost about 3 months of mom's pay...so that was the end of that experiment before it started!
Laser technology has advanced farther than Theodore Maiman probably could have imagined. From just a laboratory curiosity to an essential technology that has changed the world.
My mother, now 80 plus years old, worked at Perkin Elmer in Norwalk Ct back in the late 50s early 60s. The engineers invited some clerks to their lab to see the first ever Visible laser developed there, She was one of them.
I find it interesting how many things they got correct, how many they were close, and also the number of ideas that never happened! Dentists are using UV light, but not laser light, no long earth bound vacuum conduits with mirrors, and all of the world's communications down one laser Beam... whilst completely missing out in fibre optic transmission with both plastic and glass instead of mirrors and vacuum tubes.
Tried to research "George Spelvin, DDS" presumed oral surgeon pioneering in dental applications of the laser, but found nothing conclusive. I did, however, discover that George Spelvin is a theatre pseudonym, like John Doe for stage actors. Was this, perhaps, just a mock nameplate? (Like reserved phone exchange 555?) Some of us may be familiar with "actress" Georgina Spelvin, but that's another (yet likely related) story. (Rumor has it that she wasn't acting.)
Adding that, after digging even a little deeper, I discovered that "George Spelvin" was specifically popular as a means of denoting an actor's second billing, in productions where they played two roles. The more you know...
10:20 -- do the Laser Dance! This was a really good one-- the mouse work alone would have made it stand out in my 8th Grade class (didn't make the rounds, alas).
Oh man, I can just imagine if I was born back then, aiming to be an electronics design engineer. Now it's a bunch of coding, but I can imagine the total awe back then of the possibilities of the future. And how did it deliver!
There's a trip down memory lane. I remember seeing this back in middle school and thinking to myself that it might be a little far fetched. Given the current state of things it really wasn't far off the mark.
I wonder how cheaply one could make a 3D model viewer by crossing two lasers today. I also quite like the idea of a dentist using a laser drill, though how painless it would be is something to be determined.
I can remember reading a Unitid Nations technical report on the laser when I was young it theorised that we would have laser tellecomunications links. As it was an early report it did not include it had to be line of sight with no obscureing such as water vaper. It also mentioned about the use in dentistry, but what happend to that? Thanks for the video.
So that's how prehistoric laser communication was. I did read about ruby flash and CO2 lasers as a child. Then lower power lasers are still used today at most stores these days. Technology has come a very long way since then. Now I think I'll start watching these movies 🎥 now almost everyone has lasers
Some day, lasers will be used to store music on tiny reflective discs, much smaller than conventional vinyl records, and those disks will later be refined to store television programs such as "The IT Crowd".
Interesting about w wanting to send the laser beam through a tube instead of using fibre optics which had already been around for some time. It would be slightly faster to send each pulse but it would be incredibly more expensive especially if you wanted to run multiple signals side by side. I wonder if ping time is considered that critical anywhere nowadays?
i gotta say, watching you splice that 16mm single perf is bringing back a lot of pleasant (and some unpleasant) memories of late night editing sessions in film school. Struggling with a flatbed that was a Warner Brothers "surplus special" dating back to the early fifties, constantly having to fiddle with the timecode reader and praying that I'd have a cut ready for screening the next morning. Ah, those were the days.
Oh, they didn't know that cats love chasing that bright red spot? It's a pity.
What I like about this video is that it brought the modern science and technology to the masses without dumping too much information or complicated formulae. Getting your knowledge across without being boring, overly simplistic or incomprehensible is an art in itself.
Back then, lasers weren't quite portable enough to be carried around and waved erratically. Of course, fiberoptics could eventually be used to direct the beam, but mishaps were more prone to ignite or vaporize bits of the cat. (Sounds like a great Itchy & Scratchy episode!)
I Thought the dog at 6:19 was going to go for the laser analogue jet of hose pipe water though.
Your glasses tell me more than you will ever know about you.
Cats? You get 2 people on site in a dark room with a red laser level and a green laser level and a vape cloud machine and they won't leave.
I used to use a HeNe gas laser - mounted on a box with a powersupply that plugged into the wall -- as a cat toy! (cheap diode lasers were not a thing then)
I think my favourite part is the optimism in the thought "Lasers could even be used to carry messages to the most distant galaxies" :)
I mean, I'm not saying one _can't_ do that, but I'd probably start with M31 in Andromeda and see if anyone replies within the next 5 million years before investing in the comms network beyond that point.
It's fascinating that the laser was so developed already then but the optical fibre wasn't invented yet. Firing laser into vacuum tubes :)
Vacuum pipes... contrary to vacuum tubes a.k.a. thermionic valves :)
But then they guessed right about space-to-space laser links. The Starlink satellites use this technique.
@@CraigBrideau But then again I'm sad that it took so long to get to this point. And what about the plethora of suggestions they made for the application of laser? Do we have 3D TV today? No, we gave up once more some years ago!
Related Factoid: The LIGO laser interferometer shoots lasers into tubes because it requires free space beams for measurements of gravity waves.
Funny enough, fiber optics had actually already been experimented with since the turn of the century. It just took a decade or two after the laser's invention for scientists to purify and dope glass in such a way as to marry the two technologies into something so useful for communications.
Fantastic film Fran. I've always considered the development of the laser right up there with the transistor/semiconductor as the most influential inventions of the 20th century.
WOW
Fran, I can not believe that a film this old actually mentions LED lasers.
Must have been cutting edge tech at the time.
They mention GaAs semiconductor lasers, but not fiber optics, but then guessed right about space-to-space direct laser links like Musk's Starlink satellites.
@@CraigBrideau I'd say they came close enough to predicting modern fiber optics when they speculated about directing laser light through tubes.
@@Dee_Just_Dee Still, the tubes were only for protection, the bends would happen only in the relay stations while the tubes would have had to be 100% straight
Just to clarify, an LED is not a laser, it is a light emitting diode. What they mentioned was a 'semiconductor laser' which is known today as a Laser Diode. The main difference btwn LED and LD, can be understood by reviewing the acronym LASER, the S stands for Stimulated, where as in an LED (light emitting diode) light is amplified via "Spontaneous" emission, not "Stimulated" emission.
In short, photons in a laser cavity stimulate excited electrons to release a photon of the same wavelength, and frequency as itself, whereas spontaneous emission occurs with no such stimuli, simply the result of many excited electrons falling back to lower energy levels at will according to when there is room for them in the lower energy states. So, an LED cannot produce coherent light of a single frequency. I.e., a red LED is emitting a range of red frequencies.
@@RusticRockMusic There's even an in-between device known as a superluminescent diode (SLD), which is a gain medium like a laser diode, but without the reflective regeneration of a true laser. The light emitted by an SLD is an interesting hybrid of the behavior of an LD and LED.
Fran, thank you so much for these movies. Really love them!
Yeah, thanks a lot for the video!
From MEETOPTICS team,
One application they didn't mention was the laser gyroscope (or ring laser gyroscope). When this film was made, I was on the Navy ship USS Norton Sound which tested many things. One of the things they started testing in 1966 was the laser gyroscope. It is commonly used today. It still has the same curvature of the earth issue as mechanical gyroscopes where if you could sail around the earth on a great circle the gyroscope would thing the ship's pitch rotated 360 degrees end over end. On the Norton Sound, this was corrected by linking to the dead reckoning system and a computer was involved which I believe was a Univac 1219.
Back in the 80's our BBC science series called "Horizons" did a programme on Lasers called "A solution looking for a problem". Little did we know just how dependant we would become on them!
Thats interesting, because the CD came out in 1982.
@@Tommyinoz1971 Probably best not to rely on memory for dates. But then I couldn't find it doing a web search, so that is going to be as near as I can get :-)
Back in the early 70s the Bell Labs geeks gave us a live assembly about lasers in grammar school. I grew up a few miles from the Labs. Which is what all the locals called the campus. What an insane asylum that place was.
I remember on of the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures where they said that when the laser was introduced, it was referred to as "A solution looking for a problem" and this would have been in the 80s so we definitely had uses for lasers by then.
Hi Fran. Great film. I had the pleasure and distinctly good fortune of being the partner and assistant to the inventor and developer of the first IBM PC based laser light show system in the late 1980s. We also learned to reprocess large frame gas lasers using a hi-vacuum system he built. Good times.
Thank you, Fran, for keeping films like these alive. The makers surely knew how to convey information. A lost skill. You are the best! Keep well!
The video is great!
From MEETOPTICS team,
And core- blimmey Fran... these old 16mm rolls are just absolute GOLD. Thank you for being curator of such work & releasing it to us.... MAGIC!
Ruby Rod? Super green!
BzzzZzzZzzzzzZzzz!
MUL-TI-PASS!
This was the best one yet
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,
As a Star Wars-obsessed kid around 1981, I saw a show at the laser lab at the Ontario Science Centre. They did the balloon-in-balloon demo, a balloon full of propane, laser to the moon, all that stuff. I was fascinated and read all the National Geographic and Popular Science stuff about lasers. Wanted my own ruby to make one. So it's incredible to me that I can buy a laser at the store for a dollar just to play with the cats.
I'm loving Fran cinema.
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,
I took a tour of Texas Instruments facility in Dallas around then and saw a ruby laser blast a hole part way through a penny. I was fortunate enough to be given that penny and carried it for many years with a tiny hole in Lincolns head. (We were all way too impressed by the feat to attach any kind of symbolism to the placement of the hole!)
Yikes!!! (In Dallas, no less...)
As a laser technician I strongly approve of this film!
The video is great!
From MEETOPTICS team,
Great distorted audio at the beginning. Makes for a very authentic 16mm viewing experience.
I loved that video! Back in the early 90s my brother asked me if I’d like to go on a “service call” with him. Turns out he was one of the leading LASER technicians in the Country (probably the World) and I had just been invited in. Twenty-six years later I’ve worked on some fantastic LASERS, created some cool electronic devices, and even patented a new optical device for using LASERS and X-rays together. Thanks so much for the video, it was basically the same thing my brother taught me the first few weeks I worked with him! ❤️
Each time he says ruby rod, I see Ruby Rhod yelling: "BZZZZZZZZ!!!" :D
Excellent upload, Fran.
I started my senior year of high school in 1968. Our science teacher arranged for someone from Bell labs to talk to our class about lasers. He demonstrated how a laser can be used for communication. He had an AM radio tuned to the local radio station and sent a modulated, low-watt laser beam across the room to a laser receiver that received the modulated laser signal and converted it back to the sound from the radio. He let students use their hands to block the beam to interrupt the radio broadcast.
And the vacuum tubes for transportation became the glass fibers and the rest is history... Thanks Fran.
These old films are the best! Please keep sharing what you can!
The video is great!
From MEETOPTICS team,
I cannot say the word "Laser" without doing "air quotes" and a Dr Evil voice. The narrator here does a pretty good job of that too!
The video is great!
From MEETOPTICS team,
I remember seeing this in junior high.
Love your film digitizations! Thanks so much for sharing them!
I actually had a chance to hear Maiman speak in person a while back; he had plenty of good stories. Really interesting to hear the perspective from those early days.
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,
Fun and interesting, Fran! Thanks for saving this vintage film! And I just remembered, somewhere in one of my junk boxes I have a very old Hughes Aerospace laser tube. I really should do something with it.
When I was 12, my dad brought me to the open-house in the engineering department of a local university. In one of the rooms, a graduate student was demonstrating lasers. (Keep in mind that I had just seen "Goldfinger" in the theatre, where tied-up Sean Connery asks super-villain Auric Goldfinger, "Do you expect me to talk?", as a laser slowly moves across a platform to Bond's crotch, and Goldfinger responds "No Mr. Bond. I expect you to die.".) The student defocused the laser and got me to wave my hand in front of the unfocused beam. He then asked me to step back, focused the beam and zapped a hole through a couple of razor blades. It was then and there that I made up my mind that THIS was where I wanted to be. I thought universities were magical places.
I never went into engineering like my dad wanted, but became a research psychologist. The honour fell to our older son who went into engineering in that very department. But I did continue to build pedals and pickups for nearly 40 years, once I was old enough.
That's a seriously cool demonstration!
In elementary school we were learning about the planets and telescopes and stuff, and the janitor brought in his own telescope in the daytime to show a few of our classes. At first we were like "What the heck can you see in the sky during the daytime with a telescope?", but then he proceeded to point it at the sun, and cut a black trash bag in half using the beam coming out the eyepiece, like a laser. He told us to never point telescopes at the sun or that's what can happen to your eyes. Lol, thanks Mr. Janitor...
I had to send this to Ben from Applied Science because I think there might be some useful stuff in here for his ruby laser project haha, amazing find Fran
I may have just learnt more specifics of exactly ‘what’ a “L.a.s.e.r.” is &, correct principles of operation (& the history thereof), explained in laymen terms within this fantastically made, reasonably short & concise vintage science teaching ad film, then all previous sources I received thru education of the 70’s & 80’s. Thanks Fran for lighting my Laser of intrigue today! 💡📽🎬🧠👀🗣
That balloon-in-a-balloon trick is still really popular for showing the impact of wavelength on absorption in educational demos today!
I enjoyed watching this film. I remember when LASERs were new and I always wanted one of my own to experiment with. Today you can practically buy penlight lasers in some gas stations.
How much everything has changed!
From MEETOPTICS team,
11:12 "The laser is already used to destroy tumors on the retina." Then that shot that looks like a flame thrower. Just hold still............
The scene just before with the mice tumor exploding.
Interesting film! It reminded me of a 10 y.o. boy in the early seventies, that, after reading in the "Energy" book from the Time-Life Science Library that a laser was made by using a mirrored ruby rod excited by a light bulb, remembered that the wrist-watch he was given had 23 rubies (bearings) and he decided to remove all of them, in order to fuse them with quartz crystal (easily found where he used to live), to make a small ruby rod and assemble his own laser!
It never worked, but that didn't stop him from experimenting in every area he sparked interest in, driven by his insanely inquisitive mind...
Thank you Fran for all your time in putting this together. Looking forward the others.
This was a great watch! Thanks for sharing, Fran!
Thanks for going to the trouble to transfer and share these, Fran. Might be their only chance at survival.
An amazing film, THANK YOU for sharing this! I remember about 50 years ago reading about the possibility of using lasers for dental work. Too bad they still haven't gotten there yet.
On a totally different note, I would love to find a copy of a film I saw in high school back in 1977 where they were talking about modern medical marvels. There was one IIRC who invented the shunt for hydrocephalitics, and he was a mechanic or machinist of some sort. His terminology was most interesting to say the least. He was commenting on the effectiveness of the shunt on infants and he said something like, "Because of this, the babies can now be... salvaged." The entire class burst out laughing.
We shall call it the Alan Parsons Project
I am the eye in the sky...😁
Keep the Classic coming I love the Classic video clips..
These are great! Thank you for taking time to post these! 🙏
Yeah, thanks a lot for the video!
From MEETOPTICS team,
Thanks for spending the time to archive and share these !
Yeah, thanks a lot for the video!
From MEETOPTICS team,
"Dr. Strangelove" alert at 4:56. Nixie alert at 14:10! The person with the garden hose has much better discipline than myself. I love animals, but that dog would have got a little wet if I had the hose! Thanks Fran for bringing these great videos to us.
Good to hear Dr. Maiman's name mentioned as one of the inventors of the laser. He seems to have been neglected in recent popular historical articles. While it is important to credit theoreticians with inventions, somebody always needs to be able to build the damn thing.
They sure liked Superman with that intro. I was 13 and remember well all the promise of the future with all that new technology coming. Auto driving cars, flying cars, laser guns!
The first laser I saw was from the Edmund Scientific company in 1974. It was part of a school demo.
They had fiber optics in the '60s...I think they go back to the '30s. Wonder why they went with those vacuum pipes? I suppose less light loss?
Keep in mind that you're looking at it from historical perspective with all the facts. Many inventions were technically "invented" about 20-30 years before their common knowledge and use. It looks like use of fiber optics as communications were first invented just 3 years before this video and knowledge of it may have been classified as their use in NASAs Apollo cameras was classified.
I always looked forward to the next Edmund Scientific catalog in the mail! Pretty sure they pioneered some of the first tabletop commercial lasers offered to the public.
Thanks for posting! I work on medical lasers and a lot of the technical language is still the same.
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,
Every time he says Ruby Rod I think of Milla Jovovich for some reason.
Also thank you Fran for this. These movies are awesome. Interesting to compare the predicted uses then to the actual uses today.
What a fantastic film, thanks very much for sharing it.
wow thank you for this upload...! clearly explained it better than modern videos...!
Except for color saturation in places, excellent quality!
Awesome. I love these old school films.
The video is great!
From MEETOPTICS team,
Thanks, Fran. My dad worked on the optics for Hughes for lasers and the satellite image systems (spinning optics) way back in the late 50s and very early 60s. I'd like to find some of these old Hughes patents (after he passed away, we discovered D size rolled up engineering prints of one of the systems in a tube buried in his workshop - he must've taken it home with him decades ago, unfortunately, the cleaners tossed it in the dumpster along with priceless stuff from that era in a box -😢).
This whole video reminded me of the funny video's you'd get in Fallout 4 about what makes you S.P.E.C.I.A.L but the mish-mashed music at the end was so spot on I thought it was a Bethesda production. Had me laughing so good. It was a really interesting video on Lasers though. It's so trippy to see what people in the 60's thought of technological uses for laser light before we had things like LASER Cutters and Laser Pointers or PC Laser Mice. Or more importantly the Laser Interlink communication satellites put up by SpaceX the other day for Starlink.
We really are living in the future.
Nice Fran/Fender logo!!!
Love the uploads thank yeah!
The video is great!
From MEETOPTICS team,
A real gem great to see thanks fran
Dude this is so cool thanks Fran.
I wonder how many old movies like this still sit in the back of closets in schools. like those books on the bottom shelf in the back of the library.
great film...I saw a ruby laser demo at the NBS in Boulder, a few years ago-after much excitement and planning, my friend and I were going to build one!-after collecting a few things for the flashtube circuit, we learned that the ruby crystal was going to cost about 3 months of mom's pay...so that was the end of that experiment before it started!
9:30 someone pick that damn phone call up :)
Thank you for the facinating historical movie. Hoping to see more of such.
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,
Fascinating as always. Thank you.
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,
thanks for posting this fran! Love these videos :D
That dog was coming to totally screw up that scientist's super sweet analogy.
Laser technology has advanced farther than Theodore Maiman probably could have imagined. From just a laboratory curiosity to an essential technology that has changed the world.
Amazing! That odd technique of finger-snapping sounded like wood snapping! 4:45
Collimated light is fun to play with, indeed!
Thank you Fran, your uploads are much appreciated
Yeah, thanks a lot for the video!
From MEETOPTICS team,
My mother, now 80 plus years old, worked at Perkin Elmer in Norwalk Ct back in the late 50s early 60s. The engineers invited some clerks to their lab to see the first ever Visible laser developed there, She was one of them.
They were so sure the laser was going to revolutionise practically everything!
And it did. Come on Graphene, you're letting the side down.
Amazing! Thanks Fran!
Thanks Fran!
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,
I find it interesting how many things they got correct, how many they were close, and also the number of ideas that never happened!
Dentists are using UV light, but not laser light, no long earth bound vacuum conduits with mirrors, and all of the world's communications down one laser Beam... whilst completely missing out in fibre optic transmission with both plastic and glass instead of mirrors and vacuum tubes.
Is there a longer version of the guitar music in the intro available somewhere? I really like that.
Tried to research "George Spelvin, DDS" presumed oral surgeon pioneering in dental applications of the laser, but found nothing conclusive. I did, however, discover that George Spelvin is a theatre pseudonym, like John Doe for stage actors. Was this, perhaps, just a mock nameplate? (Like reserved phone exchange 555?)
Some of us may be familiar with "actress" Georgina Spelvin, but that's another (yet likely related) story. (Rumor has it that she wasn't acting.)
Adding that, after digging even a little deeper, I discovered that "George Spelvin" was specifically popular as a means of denoting an actor's second billing, in productions where they played two roles. The more you know...
10:20 -- do the Laser Dance!
This was a really good one-- the mouse work alone would have made it stand out in my 8th Grade class (didn't make the rounds, alas).
You lady are a phenomenon. Where you find those movies so much better than everything (teaching videos) we can see on tv ?
I feel enlightened.
I LOVE THIS ONE!!! I wish I could watch this in person.
The video is great!
From MEETOPTICS team,
many things are already in daily use, the surprising thing is that many applications were already seen
The photograph taken from the moon of two lasers being fired from Earth is amazing!
🍌😲
That was really fun to watch! Thanks Fran! Cheers from Ottawa Canada!
Yeah, thanks a lot for the video!
From MEETOPTICS team,
Does anyone else remember the move. The Man with the X-Ray Eyes. Lol
Pretty shiny lights! 🤩
"It holds the promise of great scientific achievements"
Me over here making my cat chase a dot around the house..."yep."
thnx Fran! Again.... 👍
Oh man, I can just imagine if I was born back then, aiming to be an electronics design engineer. Now it's a bunch of coding, but I can imagine the total awe back then of the possibilities of the future. And how did it deliver!
How much everything has changed!
From MEETOPTICS team,
I remember seeing this film in school.
I wish i seen as a kid on tv programs like this in the uk
There's a trip down memory lane. I remember seeing this back in middle school and thinking to myself that it might be a little far fetched. Given the current state of things it really wasn't far off the mark.
I wonder how cheaply one could make a 3D model viewer by crossing two lasers today.
I also quite like the idea of a dentist using a laser drill, though how painless it would be is something to be determined.
One slip and you're smiling on the other side of your face. LOL.
NEVER cross the beams, Janokins!
🍌😉
I can remember reading a Unitid Nations technical report on the laser when I was young it theorised that we would have laser tellecomunications links.
As it was an early report it did not include it had to be line of sight with no obscureing such as water vaper.
It also mentioned about the use in dentistry, but what happend to that?
Thanks for the video.
Last time I was at the dentist they scrubbed the plaque off my teeth with a laser.
So that's how prehistoric laser communication was. I did read about ruby flash and CO2 lasers as a child. Then lower power lasers are still used today at most stores these days. Technology has come a very long way since then. Now I think I'll start watching these movies 🎥 now almost everyone has lasers
Amazing, Thanks a lot
Only a year later we put laser retroreflectors on the Moon.
I was meaning to ask you this for a while now - What is the music you use for the opening? It reminds me so much of early Wim Wenders movies!
Some day, lasers will be used to store music on tiny reflective discs, much smaller than conventional vinyl records, and those disks will later be refined to store television programs such as "The IT Crowd".
Interesting about w wanting to send the laser beam through a tube instead of using fibre optics which had already been around for some time. It would be slightly faster to send each pulse but it would be incredibly more expensive especially if you wanted to run multiple signals side by side.
I wonder if ping time is considered that critical anywhere nowadays?
The tech really started to take off when Dr. Evil started fitting them onto sharks' heads.
Really enjoyed that.. thank you.
So fascinating!!!
From MEETOPTICS team,