Ruby laser weaknesses in the lining. Ruby lasers were used extensively in tattoo and hair removal, but are being replaced by alexandrite and s in this application. The ruby laser was the first laser to be made functional. Built by Theodore Maiman in 1960, the device was created out of the concept of an "optical maser," a maser that could operate in the visual or infrared regions of the spectrum. In 1958, after the inventor of the maser, Charles Townes, and his colleague, Arthur Schawlow, published an article in the "Physical Review" regarding the idea of optical masers, the race to build
Laser peening crater created by laser irradiation in vacuum. S. A. Metz and F. A. Smidt, Jr. irradiated nickel and vanadium foils in air with a pulsed laser at a low power density and observed voids and vacancy loops after annealing the foils, suggesting that a high concentration of vacancies was created by the stress wave. These vacancies subsequently aggregated during post-iradiation annealing into the observed voids in nickel and dislocation loops in vanadium. In 1971, researchers at Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio began investigating whether the laser shocking process could improve metal mechanical properties using a high energy pulsed laser.