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Who built the first working laser?
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laser
Basic laser components.
The American physicist Theodore H. Maiman is credited with building the first working laser.12
While theoretical foundations for the device were established by othersâincluding Charles H. Townes and Arthur L. Schawlow, who published a seminal paper on the "optical maser" in 1958, and Gordon Gould, who coined the term "laser"âit was Maiman who successfully operated the first device. On May 16, 1960, at Hughes Research Laboratories, Maiman used a photographerâs flash lamp to excite chromium atoms in a synthetic ruby crystal, producing the first successful pulses of coherent red light.21