Laser laser devices. The question of just how to assign credit for inventing the laser remains unresolved by historians. On May 16, 1960, Theodore H. Maiman operated the first functioning laser at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California, ahead of several research teams, including those of Townes, at Columbia University, Arthur Schawlow, at Bell Labs, and Gould, at the TRG (Technical Research Group) company. Maiman's functional laser used a solid-state flashlamp-pumped synthetic ruby crystal to produce red laser light, at 694 nanometers wavelength; however, the device only was capable of pulsed operation, because of its three-level pumping design scheme. Later that year,
Chemical laser C. Pimentel in 1965. First, chlorine (Cl) was vigorously photo-disassociated into atoms, which then reacted with hydrogen, yielding hydrogen chloride (HCl) in an excited state suitable for a laser. Then hydrogen fluoride (HF) and deuterium fluoride (DF) were demonstrated. Pimentel went on to explore a DF-CO transfer laser. Although this work did not produce a purely chemical continuous wave laser, it paved the way by showing the viability of the chemical reaction as a pumping mechanism for a chemical laser. The continuous wave (CW) chemical HF laser was first demonstrated in 1969, and patented in 1972, by D. J. Spencer,