Yesterday marked a milestone in technology, fifty years ago on 16th May 1960, Theodore Maiman and his team at Hughes Reseach Laboratory unveiled the first LASER. Since then, this amazing device has evolved and life without the laser is now quite hard to imagine. The laser is in everyday use in applications for industries like communications, military, data storage, manufacturing, surgery, retail and of course entertainment.
For those in the DJ industry, SEDA (http://www.seda.org.uk) marked this milestone last night at the SEDA ShowNight with an update on the changes in laser safety law in the entertainment industry presented by Will Perkins.
At the weekend, I was DJing for a client who had hired in a specialist laser show company to provide an outdoor laser show as the venue could not allow the more traditional fireworks display. The party goers were mezmorized as the brilliant show unfolded, the whole spectrum of colours was displayed, the beams moved incredibly fast - an awesome sight which certainly gave an incredible WOW factor. I do use lasers as part of my lightshow, but these were something else!
The future for lasers is also very exciting. Looking at the BBC website's science pages, I see that laser power attainable is now approaching a petawatt - this is a far cry from my little 30 milliwatt laser lightshow!! Reading on, it looks like a future application for lasers will mean that huge amounts of energy released by fusing hydrogen atoms into helium could be harvested for our ever increasing power demands. My dad who was a scientist (Dr G Mole, 1912 - 2004) was convinced that one day this would happen and the world would be a safer and better place without the need for nuclear reactors. He lived through an incredible period of technological change and witnessed all these developments. He shared all this with me with great knowlege and passion. Were he still alive, he would truly be excited by these advances in technology - I miss you dad.
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