Theodore H. Maiman passed away at age 79, here in Vancouver, on May 5. Twice nominated for a Nobel Prize, winner of the Japan Prize and the Wolf Prize in Physics, and an inductee into the American National Inventors Hall of Fame, Maiman will perhaps be most remembered for building the world's first working laser in 1960, while conducting research under the auspices of the Hughes Aircraft Company. True, there were other scientists at places like Bell Laboratories, IBM, Siemens, and Westinghouse who were working toward such a device, but, despite minimal funding, Maiman's interests in electrical engineering and optics gave him the edge.

Because the theoretical basis of lasers had already been outlined, originally by Albert Einstein and then by scientists like Charles H. Townes, Arthur L. Schawlow, and Gordon Gould, the credit for lasers (in the form of patents and awards) was eventually split among them all. Also, working devices using microwaves had already been developed (and had been dubbed masers). But Maiman, born in Los Angeles, was the first to get visible light to demonstrate the unique characteristics we now use to record and play back data, measure the distance to objects like the moon (one of the first practical uses of a laser beam), read bar codes, perform surgery, cut solid objects, put on lysergic laser shows at planetariums, and point to stuff across the room.

So, what is a laser? That's not so easy to describe (although there is a helpful video at ieee-virtual-museum.org/collection/tech.php?id=2345693 and a lot of material on Wikipedia). The word laser is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". Basically, there are some substances that you can jam full of energy to the point where a narrow wavelength of light is boosted and released. That's the amplification part–the emission of radiation (in this case visible light, which is just a segment of the spectrum of electromagnetic energy) by stimulating a reaction. Maiman used a synthetic ruby and bombarded it with energy from high-output photographic flash lamps.

After he demonstrated his device following nine months of work (on May 16, 1960), Maiman wasn't pleased that the media quickly called it a death ray. (I can find no reference to how he felt after seeing James Bond nearly cut in half by a movie mockup of one in Goldfinger.) However, as more substances that could produce laser light were discovered (many of the early models used rare gases), everything from killer rays to healing surgery became possible.

The thing that makes laser light so special is that it's unnatural. In the normal world, light is a jumble of wavelengths. What gets emitted from the sun is a big hunk of spectrum that includes visible light bracketed between nonvisible energies like infrared (which carries heat) and ultraviolet (which we put on sunscreen to block, and triggers the body to produce valuable vitamin D). As we were all told at some time in school, the reason we see colours is that various substances (like the dyes in my Hawaiian shirt) reflect back certain frequencies of the spectrum that we identify as orange, blue, red, and so forth.

But even the most painfully vibrant colours on a tropical shirt still encompass relatively big chunks of spectrum. With laser light the slice is so narrow that the light is a focused beam instead of a jumble of wavelengths that interfere with each other and blend together. Just compare a laser pointer to a flashlight­. Even though the lens of a flashlight is supposed to focus its light, we all know that the beam widens out over a very short distance. In comparison, the laser beam that first measured the distance to the moon (it was aimed at a reflector left during the Apollo 11 moon landing) was about six kilometres wide when it hit the moon, after travelling more than 380,000 kilometres.

Thanks to the amplification aspect, a focused laser beam is much more powerful than a wider slice of light would be. What would happen if we could boost white light to those energy levels? I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure there'd be nobody left to take notes on the effects. After all, the light emitted by a laser can be millions of times stronger than the same wavelength in ordinary light.

The properties of laser light mean that we can control it in many ways. It can be sent long distances, pulsed on and off incredibly rapidly, and used to carry information. By the 1980s, low-powered lasers could be created by small light-emitting diodes (the descendants of 1970s pocket-calculator displays, and also of the 1940s and '50s vacuum-tube era that led to the maser). And the 1980s were when lasers (along with computers, for that matter) began moving out of science labs and into people's houses.

In particular, the compact-disc player turned all of us into laser owners; with innovations like computer optical storage drives, DVD players, and laser pointers, that's not likely to change anytime soon. I remember the first time I saw a pocket-size laser pointer for under $100–it was 1996 and I bought it instantly. Like the computer, here was a mysterious device I'd been hearing about all my life, and it was finally about to become a commonplace item. Sure, I never really found much practical use for my laser pointer, but the mere fact I could own one made its purchase mandatory.

In a mere 36 years, the laser went from a complicated laboratory device to something that could fit in the palm of my hand, powered by a pair of AA batteries. The next year I bought my first CD burner, and these days there are lasers built into objects all around us. All that since 1960, thanks in large part to Theodore Maiman.