LASER

Today, lasers can be found almost everywhere, from telephone lines to cutting edge scientific research, supermarket scanners, and even cat toys.The first laser light was produced on May 16, 1960 at the Hughes Research Lab in Malibu, California when Theodore Maiman switched on his fist-sized device that flashed a bright red spot onto a photo-detector. Since then, lasers have become smaller, more powerful, and ubiquitous in modern technology.

Lasers have had an especially big impact on information technology. Sending data using digitized laser light signals over fiber optics has revolutionized the transfer of data. The IBM Roadrunner, the world's second fastest supercomputer, has over 45,000 lasers used for sending data across its 133,000 processing cores. Likewise, fiber optics make up the backbone of the Internet as nearly all data runs on fiber optic lines.

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