In 1951, Charles Townes conceived the idea of the maser, a laser precursor, while sitting in a park one sunny morning in Washington D.C., and a few months later he began building it, using ammonia gas as the active medium. Townes and his colleagues coined the word "maser" for this device, which is an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation. OSA Fellow Charles Townes received the Nobel Prize in 1964 for discovering the principles behind the laser, the practical applications of which altered the way we communicate daily.
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