This is part 1 of a series of articles on the invention of the laser 50 years ago.
Winston Churchill famously said that history is written by the victors. In the case of the laser it might be more accurate to say that history was written by those with the best public relations team.
This weekend, on 16 May to be precise, the laser celebrates its 50th anniversary. On this day in 1960, Theodore “Ted” Maiman, a junior employee at the Hughes Aircraft Company, observed the first evidence of laser action.
The Netherlands may be one of Europe’s leading broadband nations, but it’s suffering from a familiar problem – the actual broadband speeds received by consumers are significantly lower than advertised. A study carried out by Telecompaper in partnership with iPing shows that Dutch subscribers currently receive about 60 percent of the average advertised broadband speeds.
NEXTGEN09, LEEDS — What’s the best way for local authorities to encourage the roll out of next-generation broadband without distorting competition? The French experience, 
NEXTGEN09, LEEDS — It was standing room only at Fibrecamp this afternoon; a measure of the interest in providing high-speed broadband and next-generation access in the UK. Perhaps it is also some sort of recognition of how many people in this country are still affected by poor broadband connectivity, or have no broadband in the first place. It seems clear to me that the market hasn’t delivered for these people, and it isn’t likely to in the near future. There is an alternative – build it yourself – and that’s where Fibrecamp comes in.
An interview with Kathleen Maiman
In their own words “Bell Labs threw a party and everybody came” – and most journalists (and I confess that I was one of them) didn’t seem to appreciate that this was the birthday of a dry, scientific paper rather than the creation of a working device a few years later.
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