In the 1960s, when the first lasers were invented, they were huge, fragile devices. Taking up a large lab bench or optical table, and enclosed in clumsy glass tubes. Yet nowadays, if you walk into a supermarket, the checkout clerks invariably have a red laser. And people carry around CD and DVD players with tiny solid state lasers. The book explains the short 50 year history of how these changes came about.



Bertolotti writes for a general audience. The gist of any laser's operation - the population inversion in excited states, is simply and well described. He explains how a plethora of laser types emerged. As new lasing media were actively and successfully searched for. The book also goes into the many commercial applications of lasers. Including in manufacturing, which the average reader might well be unaware of.



The future indeed seems bright for lasers.