On Thu, 6 Sep 2012, mddeming@xxxxxxx wrote:
Theodore H. Maiman created the first working model in 1960. For their research in the field of stimulated emission, Townes, Basov and Prokhorov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964. Tesla did many great things in electrical engineering, This was not one of them.
In Tesla's defense, the operation of a Tesla coil (a primary exciting resonance in the secondary, which produces a high-voltage wave at the resonant frequency) is remarkably similar to that of a laser (a light or flashlamp exciting resonance in the lasing medium, which produces a high-intensity beam of photons all at the resonant frequency).
Lasers even have analogues to SGTCs (flashlamp-pumped lasers) vs SSTCs (CW lasers). There is of course none of the two-way interaction between primary and secondary in a laser, as far as I know, so nobody's made the laser-equivalent of a DRSSTC.
So yes, it's very unlikely he invented the laser. But he did invent an electrical device which may have laid the foundation for its invention.
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