I found this site while looking for information about my old HK 430, but thought I'd share a picture of a vintage laser I have in my collection of lasers from the Kennedy years. It's a completely original and fully operational 1962 Hughes Aircraft Company Model 200 pulsed ruby laser, made by the company that made the very first laser two years earlier. I believe this to be the world's oldest commercial and/or operational laser.

http://sites.google.com/site/bobspublicpics/_/rsrc/1238998169452/Home/IMG_1146_1_1.JPG?height=315&width=420

I realize this is off topic here, but lasers are only recently becomming consumer products themselves and there are few, if any, other laser collectors out there. I thought y'all might appreciate it! This is also posted over in the Vintage Electronics forum here.

It would've been hard to sneak that into class and annoy the teacher. :D
What was it used for ?
On a somewhat related note Mitsubishi is now making a Laser Television, it's supposed to blow everything else away in terms of color rendition, brightness, detail, etc.

http://www.laservuetv.com/home.php?gclid=CLvqtPOkz5sCFRZCagodY2XAJA

It was used for resistor trimming on ICs. Probably replaced with something with much better beam quality and better cooling very soon. If it was an aircraft, this would be a Wright Flyer. It flys, but that's about it.

I'm impressed! I really don't know the history of lasers; will have to read up on it. If I stumbled upon one of these at an affordable price I'd probably have to drag it home myself.

On a somewhat related note Mitsubishi is now making a Laser Television, it's supposed to blow everything else away in terms of color rendition, brightness, detail, etc.It's a DLP with a laser light source. There's no color wheel, which is the only thing that annoys me with DLP projectors. It uses only one DLP chip if I remember correctly, so there's still some switching between the three colors, but it's probably faster than a color wheel as it's working at 120Hz.