I wrote this for an assignment on the History of the Laser

It all began in 1916 where Albert Einstein laid the foundation for the invention of the laser and the maser, in a ground-breaking experiment involving Max Planck's law of radiation based on the concepts of spontaneous and induced emission. The theory was forgotten until after World War II. It wasn't till 1953, Charles H. Townes, James P. Gordon and Herbert J. Zeiger produced the first maser, a device operating on similar principles to the laser, but producing …

…and much money at stake. Gould won his first minor patent in 1977, but it was not until 1987 that he could claim his first significant patent victory. The first working laser was made by Theodore H. Maiman in 1960 at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California. Maiman used a solid-state, flashlamp-pumped synthetic ruby crystal to produce red laser light at 694 nanometres wavelength. Maiman's laser, was only capable of pulsed operation due to its three energy level transitions.