Vintage Laser

[RapidRobert]

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.



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.

[Eric H]

It would've been hard to sneak that into class and annoy the teacher.
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?g...FRZCagodY2XAJA

[RapidRobert]

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.

[bgadow]

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.

[DragonMaster]

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.