The first laser beam jumped out of a ruby crystal in Theodore H. Maiman's lab in 1960. It was a puny ray of light, but it soon touched off a starburst of innovation. In the 1970s, optical fibers arrived, and communications were transformed by tiny lasers. Big lasers are now welding car bodies, guiding smart bombs, and trimming concrete. In between are lasers for supermarket scanning and eye surgery. But at the boundaries are where things get really interesting: using huge lasers to ignite fusion reactions—or small ones to grab atoms in tweezers of light.

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Bell Labs: The Laser