Talk:Arthur Leonard Schawlow

i have removed the reference to Schawlow's son Typing with just a hand on his shoulder via Facilitated Communication. It was unattributed(and probably untrue) "71.135.102.35 10:14, 3 March 2006 (UTC)"Reply

Can someone who knows how his last name is pronounced add an IPA pronunciation please? 149.217.1.6 16:23, 1 November 2007 (UTC)Reply

to mention the religion of his parent , being jewish , is it a nationality —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moh sell (talk • contribs) 10:24, 23 October 2010 (UTC)Reply

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This article states that Schawlow came up with the idea of using mirrors at the ends of the laser cavity. I was curious to see where this information came from, so I checked the sources, and could not find it anywhere. Does anyone know?

I remember the reading the story in a book written by Charles Townes, in which he describes it a little differently. I'll look up that source when I get a chance and maybe try to correct the article if need be. The sentence looks a little weird, because the resonant cavity of a maser is essentially a mirror on all sides at microwave wavelengths, with a small aperture at the end to serve as the output coupler. This works well when the wavelength is equal to the size of the cavity.

With lasers, however, the cavity is many, many times the wavelength. According to Townes, he could see that this meant if he used a cavity similar to a maser (mirrored on all sides) the light would be amplified in all directions instead of all in one direction. Townes puzzled over this problem, when Schawlow suggested using an open cavity (Mirrored only on the ends but not around the sides). By using an open cavity, any fluorescence emitted in directions other than along the beam path would be allowed to exit the cavity, thus would not be amplified. That allowed amplification along only one line, and is what made the idea complete, but of course this came at the expense of conversion efficiency. It was right after that when they published their famous paper in 1958, which kicked-off the race to build the first laser. Zaereth (talk) 01:41, 16 August 2017 (UTC)Reply

If you know the history of Gould, Schawlow and Townes and the laser at all, or anything about patent laws or the history of attributions to scientists, or if you have the wits to distinguish between a patent, an invention and a theory, then his comment that I received speaks for itself...

Hi. I'm not sure if you're still around on this IP address, but I'll leave you a message here in case you are. You might want to create a user account to make it easier for people to communicate with you.

I re-edited the paragraph you changed at Arthur Leonard Schawlow. I'm a fan of Gould's and think he didn't get nearly as much credit as he deserved. Talking about his role in the invention of the laser requires some care, though. Gould is "the inventor" of the laser in a very narrow sense: he was the first to write down the essential theory for how to make a laser and what one could do with it. If he had been treated fairly by the patent office, that should have gotten him the patent on the laser itself, but it didn't because the patent office didn't handle his applications properly. In the sciences, though, credit for a discovery is not given to the first person to write down and notarize an idea, but rather to the first person to publish the work in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Within the scientific community, Schawlow and Townes are properly credited as the discoverers of the theory of the laser, because they published their work and Gould did not. By trying to keep his work secret until he could make a working prototype, Gould denied himself scientific credit for his discovery. Maiman, of course, undeniably deserves credit for being the first person to successfully build a working laser.--Srleffler (talk) 17:24, 14 July 2018 (UTC)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.221.131.116 (talk)

I know quite a bit about all seven (including what it takes to get a patent). I'm absolutely clueless as what the point is you're trying to make. Zaereth (talk) 22:38, 24 September 2018 (UTC)Reply

I might add, for the benefit of the thousands of others who will read this, what those differences are. (I had to come up with a good analogy.) In the legal definition in the US, an "inventor" is someone who contributes directly to the conceptualization of a novel product. "Novel" means it is an entirely new concept and not just the logical next-step in an existing product's evolution. "Product" means that it is a real thing you can sell or use; not a theory, an untested hypothesis, or a natural phenomenon (you can't patent all of electromagnetism, like Samuel Morse tried to do) it must be an actual thing. "Product" also means "useful", meaning you must demonstrate some use for that thing, and then you may be stuck with that use. (Rogaine was originally patented as a heart medication. Someone else was able to get a new patent on it for hair growth.)

You can't patent something that has already been published. If you do that then it's public domain, and you're out. That's why Schawlow and Townes were very careful to stick to theory and not get into practice. Since, under the law, the first person to conceive a new product is the inventor, Schawlow and Townes are definitely at the top of that billing. Now the first to patent must be the inventor, but the inventor may not be the first to patent, or may not patent at all, like Ben Franklin. A patent is taking an invention and reducing it to practice. To patent something you have to show people how to make one.

Back then the US was a "first to conceive" country, meaning the first person to come up with the idea got the patent. This means you didn't need to be published at all, in fact it was best that you weren't. (The best patents are the ones that you don't know why they work, you just discovered they do.) What you had to prove in court was that you came up with the idea first, by using you notes, drawings, bills, letters, (emails and texts today) etc... It led to huge court battles like this one, which is why the US changed to a "first to file" country, meaning the first to file the patent became the inventor. (Cut down on a lot of legal battles, because now it's simply decided by the date and time on your patent application.)

Gould had been talking to Townes about some of his ideas, and inadvertently asked him about getting a patent. Townes gave him a few tips (but not the whole story), which is when Gould immediately went out and drew his famous sketch, which he then submitted to the patent office. Gould had two problems, though, one being that he jumped the gun, and submitted an untested hypothesis rather than a working model. (A no-no, to guard against all those perpetual-motion machines out there.) The second was that the scope of his drawings and ideas were very limited. (Didn't quite take the time to think it all through.) What Gould had drawn was the basic configuration of a linear, flash or arc-lamp pumped laser. Under the law at the time this really covered him as inventing a specific improvement on the overall concept invented by Schawlow and Townes, but in the end limited him to that one configuration and the use he named. It did not cover other lasers configurations and pumping methods like ring lasers, plasma/gas lasers, dynamic-gas lasers, diode lasers, etc... These are all various "invented" improvements on the overall concept, each with a patent and an inventor out there.

Schawlow and Townes had the broadest claim to the invention, being the parents of the idea. Gould and all the others had much narrower claims, restricted to their particular improvement. Gould got himself into trouble, though, when Maiman invented (actually proved the concept and produced a working prototype) the same thing Gould had already patented. Because you can't patent a hypothesis, that lead to the 30 year court battle. (Which really nobody minded, because when all was said and done it was worth way more than it would have been to him at the beginning.)

As an analogy, you could say Max von Stephanitz invented the German Shepherd breed, in that he came up with the original concept and based his breed on one stud dog. Through inter-breeding, people have developed many different lines of the breed, and each one can be said to be a specific improvement for some specific purpose, with each line having its own inventor, subsequent to the original. Zaereth (talk) 00:52, 25 September 2018 (UTC)Reply