It is said that necessity is the mother of invention. This adage says volumes about the early development of the laser. During World War II, U.S. military and civilian scientists searched frantically for improved radar. While these researchers met with only mixed success, their efforts spurred basic research. After the war, using knowledge gained from this line of inquiry, the first successful laser was developed in 1960.

Applications of the laser were found in numerous fields, including science, medicine, industry, and entertainment. By the 1980s, with the widespread use of lasers in industry and in commercial devices such as compact disk players and retail store price scanners, lasers were affecting the daily lives of nearly everyone in the developed world, whether they realized it or not. In a few decades, the laser has gone from a new cutting-edge technology to one that is so pervasive it is difficult...