Forty Years of Battery-Powered Diode Lasers

[Eidetical]

The issue of Popular Electronics magazine below features an article by Forrest Mims about powering diode lasers with batteries. The lasers he mentions are the LCW-5 and LCW-10 from Laser Diode, Inc. This is the company that first made diode lasers run CW at room temperature a few years earlier. The lasers are described as having an ultra-low threshold for lasing, 22 ma for the LCW-5, and that's what prompted the article. Pics of an LCW-10 and its associated conventional driver (both from 1984) are also below.

 

[RedCowboy]

In the 1984 movie TERMINATOR Schwarzenegger's laser sighted pistol prop used a HeNe with a battery pack on a wire down his sleeve, amazing that was as late as 1984......then again that was 36 years ago.......time fly and all that, bring on the quantum dot laser diodes.

True story: the making of the Terminator's laser-sighted .45 pistol

There are multiple iconic weapons in science fiction history, but few are as …

arstechnica.com