20th Century
Happy Birthday, Ruby!
Above photo: My ruby laser with a ‘mirror alignment laser’ just off to the right hand side of the photo. A small amount of smoke in the air makes the alignment laser-beam visible. In the [more…]
Arthur L Schawlow
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part Five
Melting a hole through steel: The above image needs a little explanation! The Doc messed up his camera settings and under exposed the image. So I loaded it into Gimp and played with the curves [more…]
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part Four
The Doc’s ruby laser focused onto a lighter flint. The flint has been glued to the end of a match stick. The ‘explosion’ measures approximately 4 inches diameter. Interesting things to note are the ‘candy [more…]
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part Three
More information on laser speckle can be found here: Speckle pattern A Mirror Alignment Tool The most important part of constructing a ruby laser (or any laser with external mirrors) are getting the mirrors alligned [more…]
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part Two
(a ruby rod lit by two bright blue LEDs. Due to the IR filter in my camera the pink colour is actually red. What you are seeing is the absorption of the blue light and the [more…]
Engineering
Making A Ruby Laser – Part One
Introduction For many years the Doc has had the desire to attempt the construction of a ruby laser. After six months of hard work, disappointment, late nights, lots of booze and a drained bank account [more…]