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How the Laser Came to Light

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How the Laser Came to Light How the Laser Came to Light In the early days, lasers faced an uphill struggle. Now they enjoy a vast range of applications. This laser at France’s Centre d’Essais des Landes measures the composition and turbulence of the atmosphere. CULTURE & SOCIETY_Development of the Laser Fifty years have passed since a laser first shone. Now these intense light sources can be found everywhere, from the auto industry to CD players. In a joint project, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Economics are helping to trace the laser’s economic development – and in the process, they are challenging some common assumptions about how new technologies come to be established. TEXT RALF GRÖTKER he Martians are coming! And tion, also includes researchers from ship research. “Today, however, we rec- they are armed with invinci- the Max Planck Institute for Econom- ognize the existence of what are called ble ray guns! As far back as ics and Friedrich Schiller University, innovation systems – actors who are de- 1898, American author Her- both in Jena. pendent on one another and interact bert G. Wells wove such a with one another, but are spatially sep- T tale of horror in his book The War of the MEANINGFUL TECHNOLOGY arated and spread across the fields of Worlds – more than half a century before POLICY enterprise, politics and research.” the marvel of Light Amplification by This concept also plays a role in Stimulated Emission of Radiation – that Using the development of the laser as economic policy. “It reflects the wide- is, the laser – had even been invented. their example, they are jointly seeking spread assumption that coordinated “Certainly by the time Einstein for- to identify general patterns of technol- interaction between politics, public re- mulated the theory of stimulated emis- ogy transfer and economic develop- search sponsorship and the corporate sion in 1916, it was scientifically prov- ment. The laser is the ideal candidate. sector is more beneficial to the nation- en that such a light source would come Advances in laser technology would be al economy than completely unfet- into existence,” confirms Helmuth Al- inconceivable without a steady stream tered competition,” says Fritsch. One brecht, an expert in the history of tech- of new research findings. In addition, instance frequently cited as proof of nology at the TU Bergakademie Frei- there is a well developed commercial this concept is the success of Japanese berg. “Its principal properties were also sector that exploits a wide variety of la- industry in the 1980s, which was known: extremely tight bundling and ser products and applications. And last closely managed by the then Ministry high energy density. Long before the la- but not least, its development can be of Commerce and Industry (now the ser was actually invented, it was even a studied within the framework of inter- Ministry of International Trade and In- known fact that it could be used to national comparisons. dustry, MITI). measure distances and transmit data.” At the forefront of the project is the However, the fact is that little is Albrecht is one of the partners in issue of the systemic nature of laser de- known about what happens on a mi- the LASSSIE project: “Lasers: A Spatial- velopment. “In the 1950s, the naive be- cro-level. This is unfortunate, to put it Sectoral System of Innovation and its lief still persisted that technology and mildly, as an understanding of the con- Evolution.” It explores the evolution enterprise developed along the lines text would be a valuable aid in formu- of the laser innovation system, also laid down by the relevant institutions: lating a meaningful technology policy. including the regional dimension and first comes basic research, then applied The partners in the LASSSIE project as seen from a scientific, economic and research, and finally, the technology is thus hope to find out to what extent la- political perspective. In addition to taken over by industry,” explains Jena- ser technology development in Germa- the Bergakademie Freiberg, the project, based regional economist Michael ny took the form of “coordinated inter- Photo: SPL-Agentur Focus financed by the Volkswagen Founda- Fritsch, who is also doing entrepreneur- action” – or some other form. > 1 | 10 MaxPlanckResearch 85 CULTURE & SOCIETY_Development of the Laser 1 Please blow into the light: A carbon dioxide laser helps diagnose gastric ulcers by identifying the bacteria responsible based on their metabolites. Lasers are now a standard feature of medicine, serving as scalpels, as optical drills to treat tooth enamel, and to remove kidney stones and correct defective vision. 2 When astronomers see stars, they just might be homemade. Using a laser, they can simulate a star in the heavens as a model in order to eliminate the ever-present atmospheric turbulence in the telescopic view. Guido Bünstorf, head of a research group in the Evolutionary Economics Group at the Max Planck Institute in Jena and co-initiator of LASSSIE, has, in recent years, studied the development of a whole series of industries, mostly in close collaboration with Steven Klep- per, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. In the course of their work, the two researchers discovered that de- velopment in the industrial sector gen- erally does not follow the pattern set in Japan in the 1980s, but is more akin to Darwin’s theory of evolution. It is not so much a question of a “system” as one of momentous exceptions. Klepper showed that the entire De- troit-based US auto industry emerged from the nucleus of a single company: Olds Motor Works. General Motors, Cad illac, Ford, Dodge and Chevrolet are 1 all descended from Olds. Semiconduc- tor manufacturing in Silicon Valley and the “rubber capital of the world,” Akron, have similar origins. Located on the Ohio and Erie Canal, Akron, at the end Bünstorf and Klepper gathered and sta- in Germany had no system character. of the 19th century, was growing fast tistically evaluated vast quantities of According to LASSSIE, this feature even- and prospering from the transshipment detailed information and data on the tually emerged in the 1980s. of coal and cereal products. A postcard cases they studied. They analyzed be- The research project traces the de- in Bünstorf’s office depicts a cartoon im- havior patterns and used their findings velopment process in detail. The initial age of 1930s euphoria with imposing to test mathematical models of indus- investigations are already complete. skyscrapers, broad streets and a blimp in trial development. Lasers, too, are When the project partners met in No- the sky: “Greetings from Akron Ohio.” among their research interests. vember in the wood-paneled confer- The New York-based rubber manu- ence room at the Max Planck Institute facturer Goodrich found willing inves- NO SYSTEM CHARACTER in Jena, a stack of freshly completed tors and settled in Akron. In 1888, his master’s theses lay on the table. Hel- sons took over the business and were LASSSIE began with something akin to muth Albrecht was there from Freiberg, soon producing the first pneumatic au- a bet. “It all started when were sitting Guido Bünstorf traveled from Kassel, tomobile tires. Initially in cooperation around the Klepper family’s kitchen ta- where he holds a professorship, and with Goodrich, a maker of carriage tires ble in Pittsburgh,” Guido Bünstorf re- Michael Fritsch came from the univer- named Harvey S. Firestone also set up calls. “I told Steve about my plans for sity in Jena where he holds the chair shop. And finally, the sons of the inves- the laser project. He said, ‘I don’t believe of business dynamics, innovation and tor who had backed Goodrich senior in innovation systems.’” Who actually economic change. Also in attendance went on to found a tire firm of their won the bet depends on the timescale was Wolfgang Ziegler, head of the pat- own, called Goodyear. These three applied; however, it was Steve Klepper ent information office at the Universi- firms were the progenitors of almost who ultimately emerged the loser. For ty of Jena, who became aware of the the entire American tire industry. more than ten years, the laser industry project when he, too, applied to the Photo: SPL-Agentur Focus 86 MaxPlanckResearch 1 | 10 2 Volkswagen Foundation. “It was a The extensively analyzed data show then there are also interviews with the stroke of luck for us: Ziegler himself has some clear trends. There is a distinct principal participants in industry and a background in laser research and and continuous increase in team size – research. “We are compiling a database knows all about what happened in East which presumably reflects the increas- of events sorted by year – at a level of Germany,” says Bünstorf. ing complexity of the subject matter. At detail that, over the almost fifty-year The meeting began with a student the same time, there are indications period we are looking at, does not, to presentation of a study on team build- that scientists are switching from one my knowledge, exist anywhere in the ing. In his thesis, the student had ana- team to another with increasing fre- world for any other technology.” The lyzed “patents classified under IPC H01s quency – a sign of increasing network- researchers aim to be able to track in- that deal with laser sources. German ap- ing. The meeting prompts questions, dividual persons over time as they plicants only.” Between 1961 and 2005, ideas and suggestions. Would it be pos- progress through the innovation sys- there were 3,369 laser-related patent ap- sible to analyze the data by field of ap- tem – from their dissertation to publi- plications that fit the bill.
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