Bellz Theorem, 8: Coherent Light
How it happened against how it gets told. In December 1960 at Murray Hill, Ali Javan, William Bennett and Donald Herriott got helium and neon glowing between two flat mirrors lined up to within a couple of arc-seconds, and made the first gas laser, the first to shine continuously. Nobody in the room could see its beam: it came out at 1.15 micrometres, in the infrared; they knew it by the meter. The story told later gives it a beautiful red beam, but the red one (632.8 nm) came in 1962, from Alan White and Dane Rigden, also at the Labs. The Labs called it an optical maser. As the story is told, the next day a phone call rode the beam. Labelled liberties: Dot, Gus and Mr. Pruitt are made up. Javan, Bennett and Herriott are house-style puppets, not likenesses. Song: Coherent Light, made for the show.
True story Every fact on screen was checked before release (2026-11-04). The dialogue is invented.
Cast
6
Sources
- Javan, Bennett and Herriott, Population Inversion and Continuous Optical Maser Oscillation in a Gas Discharge Containing a He-Ne Mixture, Phys. Rev. Lett. 6, 106 (1961)
- APS Physics Focus: the first gas laser (Javan, Bennett and Herriott, continuous, infrared)
- Smithsonian: the first helium-neon laser, Bell Labs, 1960
- ETHW First-Hand: The First Continuous Visible Laser (White and Rigden; the 1.15-micron laser of December 1960 and Herriott's mirrors to a couple of arc-seconds; the little red stars)
- National Academy of Sciences biographical memoir: Ali Javan (the told version: the red beam, and the phone call the next day)
- MIT News: Ali Javan, inventor of the first gas laser, dies at 89 (2016)
