// Leslie Alan Horvitz — Eureka Scientific Breakthroughs That Changed The World (2002)

// In 1916 Albert Einstein (1879–1955) had shown theoretically that atoms stimulated by radiation could emit, as well as absorb, radiation.
// Townes … brought to the university some unique skills from his experience at Bell Labs working in an industrial laboratory with engineers. Physicists, after all, didn’t have much to do with devices like amplifiers and oscillators whereas engineers did. On the other hand, engineers didn’t generally know the first thing about quan- tum mechanics and atoms and molecules, which were the do- minion of the physicist

// The idea of how to get around the second law came to Townes while he was attending a scientific committee meeting in Wash- ington, D.C., in 1957. Townes left his hotel room, which he was sharing with Schawlow, to go for an early morning stroll in nearby Franklin Park. As he walked he mulled over his problem. An idea occurred to him. He thought, “Now wait a minute! The Second Law of Thermodynamics assumes thermal equilibrium. We don’t have to have that!” He was working with light, not heat.

// At the time of his discovery, Townes won- dered why no one had discovered a laser (at least the idea for one) before. It wasn’t as though he had come up with a brand-new idea, he acknowledged—all the principles had long been known.

// And it’s even possible that Townes wasn’t the first to invent the laser.
Three other scientists—Joe Weber, a professor at the Univer- sity of Maryland, and two Soviet scientists, Nikolai Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov, in Moscow—were also making substantial contributions at the time Townes and Schawlow were trying to develop the laser. Weber, Basov, and Prokhorov all worked in the field of microwaves and molecules. In fact, Weber deserves much of the credit for discovering the basic principle for both lasers and masers. He had given the first public talk ever on the subject as early as 1952

// Townes himself acknowledged that Weber had been “one of the four people who really saw the idea” before anyone else had.

Weber Marvin J. Handbook of Lasers
https://www.twirpx.com/file/1215979/

https://habrastorage.org/webt/m8/ct/em/m8ctemr-slyzbxsk4u2365eonom.jpeg

https://math.ru/lib/book/djvu/bib-kvant-15/Kv42-85_Lazery_Deystvitelnost_i_Nadezhdy_L.V.Tarasov.djvu

Лазеры: действительность и надежды.
Лев Васильевич Тарасов
Серия Библиотечка «Квант», выпуск 42

Самодельный лазер на парах хлорида меди

https://habr.com/ru/post/464279/

А еще есть довольно популярная легенда, что лазерный эффект при искровом разряде в протяженных воздушных промежутках мог быть обнаружен задолго до открытия принципов работы лазера как такового
https://hsto.org/webt/m8/ct/em/m8ctemr-slyzbxsk4u2365eonom.jpeg

https://habr.com/post/432464/
http://lateralscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/victorian-nitrogen-laser.html

Ну или когда научатся фазировать. Но до этого ещё дальше.

Фишка не в файберах, а в спектральном уплотнении. Вангую, прорыв будет, когда упакуют в луч тысячу 10Вт диодов, без всяких промежуточных рабочих тел. Но до этого ещё не близко.

Совершенствование оптоволоконных лазеров означает скорое появление лучевого оружия
https://geektimes.com/post/300467/
https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/military/fiber-lasers-mean-ray-guns-are-coming

А я откуда знал, что для ультрафиолета? )))