THE CONQUEST OF LIGHT

[Music] [Music] these are the patterns of invisible waves we use today for communications radio waves television waves microwaves in the same family a vast potential for tomorrow are visible waves the waves which man calls light in other centuries they would have called it magic Voice by waves pictures by waves machines that talk to other machines by waves there is still a quality of magic in it this manipulation of invisible Waves by which man relays messages across vast distances by which he controls and guides waves amplif I them to extend the limits of [Music] communications for almost a century scientists have been challenged by the knowledge that light waves are like radio waves but are visible but science knew no way of generating and controlling light waves as it controls the radio waves with which we are more familiar today research scientists in many areas are experimenting with light in the communications industry there is special interest in a special kind of light wave known as coherent [Music] light coherent light the scientists know can be precisely directed Amplified and controlled and theoretically a system using coherent light could provide a Communications Highway of Staggering capacity a potential capacity of more than a million telephone conversations or a thousand television [Music] channels man has long since generated light for vision but this ordinary light by which we see is Wayward undisciplined a jumble of waves of different sizes and colors radiating outwards in Wild disorder how can light in nature undisciplined be harnessed for communications which needs a constant coherent flow of light in Only One Direction at Bell Telephone Laboratories day by day scientists have under development a new device which could revolutionize man's use of light it is called a laser or sometimes an optical merer the light it generates is a kind of light never before known on Earth it flows in a narrow beam as nearly parallel as nature allows a constant stream of precisely controlled light coherent light there are many types of lasers a laser may be a large glass tube specially formed to hold helium neon or other gas it may be a liquid glass or plastic or the heart of the laser may be a tiny Crystal made to precise [Music] specifications inside this laser equipped with special mirrors atoms are excited with an external light source when they are weakly excited the atoms begin to give off light independently of one another however when they are strongly excited conditions are created which force the atoms to release light all to the same beam the beam gets brighter as it moves within the laser in a fraction of a second it builds up millions of times and bursts through one of the mirrors a beam of light more intense and more precisely directed than has ever been produced in man's history in 1958 ideas basic to the laser were presented in a paper from Bell Laboratories by doors sholo and towns in 1960 at various research centers the first lasers were actually built they were Pulse lasers and could emit only short but concentrated bursts of light energy a pulse of energy that could be made to pierce a hole in a steel blade [Music] but the need of communications normally is not for short bursts of energy so work at Bell Laboratories went forward in the search for a laser that could send out a continuous beam of coherent light the scientists who built this laser who coaxed it to give forth light gave it a [Music] name they called it Eve February 1961 the first continuous coherent light on [Music] Earth today man can produce in many variations a of light totally new to his experience a light which begins in waves so nearly parallel that its Rays hardly diverge at all no matter how great the [Music] distance a light more purely one color than any light we have known [Music] before a light 10 million times brighter than the light on the surface of the Sun the scientist is an Explorer Moving Day by Day from the known to the unknown and like the Explorer he may have hopes which he prefers to leave unspoken yet in this light which moves in patterns whose implications are not yet grasped even cautious science sees a giant step forward in man's conquest of light and of his un Universe for in the Laser's light are endless possibilities another means of Illuminating the age-old secrets of the human [Music] cell another Pathway to research in the spinning worlds of atomic [Music] structure an ingenious microscopic welding torch a delicate tool for surgery tomorrow light may be a major medium over which men communicate a possible answer to the ever growing need for channels of communication science itself cannot know the total promise for it stands now only at the threshold of its exploration yet this narrow pathway of light leads surely to tomorrow because it's read so little it may help man to map the moon projected toward the shadowed valleys a qu of A Million Miles Away a laser beam can be focused on a tiny area only a few hundred yards wide a bridge of light a bridge across which man May communicate on Earth and in the endless reaches of outer space the laser a dramatic achievement in the conquest of light [Music]