Laser - Fictional Predictions

Fictional Predictions

See also: Raygun

Several novelists described devices similar to lasers, prior to the discovery of stimulated emission:

  • A very early example is the Heat-Ray featured in H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds (1898).
  • A laser-like device was described in Alexey Tolstoy's science fiction novel The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin in 1927.
  • Mikhail Bulgakov exaggerated the biological effect (laser bio stimulation) of intense red light in his science fiction novel Fatal Eggs (1925), without any reasonable description of the source of this red light. (In that novel, the red light first appears occasionally from the illuminating system of an advanced microscope; then the protagonist Prof. Persikov arranges a special set-up for generation of the red light.)

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