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Thanks Dave. While the old NEC head you gave me is not in the exhibit (with only space for about 1/3 of the collection there), it's in a display case where I can appreciate its wonderful quartz resonator rods all the time. The goal for this exhibit is to stimulate interest in a proper...

A really nice meter to have for holographers is a scanning fabry perot interferometer, to know if you're coherent or not (sometimes hard to tell, and not just the laser). This one from Coherent is from the mid-'90s and still works well, allowing the tuning of a 100mW OEM laser from the same...

A few years ago I was repairing a mid-'80s pulsed ruby laser and had the opportunity to see if one of my oldest meters was still working. The TRG model 113 with a model 107 "ballistic thermopile" detector is apparently as good as when new in 1966, according to the Coherent Ultima 2 from 2000...

Sounds like an application for the highest powered green laser to me. Why not?

A long baffle tube too, to keep ambient light away, in addition to the notch filter mentioned above.

The introduction of laser disk players and supermarket scanners in the late '70s incorporating He-Ne lasers really stimulated DIY laser building. Here's a very well built laser made in 1985 by Mr. Tony Gongora with a tube harvested from such a player. I got it along with his notes on the project.

In recognition of Father's Day, I thought I'd give a shoutout to possibly the Father of DIY Laser Building, C. Harry Knowles of Metrologic. Check out his biography "Genius in America" by Mary Ellen Hendrix for more info. His article in the December 1969 Popular Electronics (seen below with one...

Yeah, I also have two pairs of those and both have similar issues.

These are the goggles I've collected and/or used over the years, and most are still good. Holographers rarely wear goggles because they generally work with lower-powered and/or expanded beams from bolted-down lasers with light control baffles all over the place, but I have to keep them...

It needs to be as large as possible. Often with diode lasers, one may see fringes all the time and think the coherence length is very long. It's possible that it is really short, and just repeats at very short intervals. A holographic image featuring the "sliced bread" look is a good example...

Many diode lasers will run single mode when just above threshold current. Look for interference fringes in the reflections from a piece of glass ( a simple form of what's called a "shear plate" or "shearing interferometer") to know if it's running that way. Most applications needing a single...

Single mode lasers are more about quality of the light, not quantity. A 5 to 10mW He-Ne can be built easily at home with a surplus tube, and run all day and night with the best beam ever. Single mode lasers get real expensive real fast as the power increases, but they can be used to make...

For $40 one can buy a christmas yard projector with RGB lasers in it (with many tens of mW in each) and rotating diffractive optic pattern generators, with a remote control. Replace the pattern generator disks with bathroom glass and you have a nice and safe lumia projector. Get two and you...

Pictorial holography peaked around 1990, but never made it to "fad" status. It's generally an analog technique in a digital world. Few want to spend a half an hour or more shaking trays in the dark to process a piece of silver halide film or plate. While holograms can be made with the...

Books are sooo 20th Century!:D Read all about it by searching a bunch here and at Sam's Laser FAQ for the topics you seek. Get a laser first, and learn about how to handle the light. Get the parts for one and assemble it how you want in the case (host) you want. Then you'll know what to do...

I know of an 8x10" hologram by Greg Cherry of Cherry Optical like that, but nothing larger. There are a few microscope holograms out there with the same trick, a few stereopticons, and a few art works too (using variations on the trick). Don't have it, but you could contact Greg (Sebastopol, CA)...

"Vintage" just means old, with hints of significance, representation, and fond memories. Maybe another 40 years before lasers get to antique status, like this classroom pointer from the 1890s (the one with the tape on it).

Another neat old laser pointer is this Toko model TLP-200 from 1996 with a 635nm diode. It has a scanner inside that gives a circle or a line, with an amplitude control to adjust the size of either.

If you wanted a laser 60 years ago, this is what you'd be lookin' at. The Sylvania model GL-6211 was one of the only gas lasers available then, before He-Ne was made to lase at visible wavelengths. Sold without a cover, but with a detector! :) This is one of the "Holy Grail's" for me...

Apparently the speed of light can be slowed in air by passing it through a mask that gives it spatial structure! https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/01/150123144158.htm