Laser: The Inventor, the Noble Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War [Paperback]

Nick Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2003

An account of the man who successfully proved that he had invented the laser recalls Gordon Gould's thirty-year battle with the U.S. Patent Office to claim this important legacy, in an inside look at the American patent process. Reprint.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

History has witnessed many discoveries made almost simultaneously by competing scientists: Newton and Leibniz quarreled over who invented the mathematical system of calculus and even this year's mapping of the human genome was announced only after labored negotiations between two leading scientists. In his latest effort, the prolific Taylor (John Glenn; In Hitler's Shadow) recounts the compelling life of Gordon Gould, a young scientist who hit upon how to build a laser in 1957. Over the 30 years he spent fighting for the patent, he neither finished his Ph.D. nor attended conferences to raise his scientific credibility. During that time, he butted up against Charles Townes, who won the Nobel Prize in physics for discovering the "optical maser," as he called it, even though courts later ruled against the U.S. patent office, arguing that Townes's original design wouldn't have worked.(Under U.S. patent law, an inventor need not reach the patent office first to claim a patent, but only show priority in writing down an idea that can be realized by someone skilled in that field. Gould fortunately had had his original notebook notarized.) In Taylor's hands, Gould comes across like a hapless figure from Greek tragedy, pursued unrelentingly by a malevolent deity until a kindly one, in his case the U.S. judicial system, takes pity. While Taylor's research is thorough (though one might quibble with the precision of some of his technical descriptions), he tends to overwrite. Still, science buffs who enjoy reading about the triumph of an underdog or a good legal battle will enjoy the book, while libraries will find it a worthwhile addition to their scientific biography collections. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Taylor's writing style makes the science of the laser, so ubiquitous now in modern science and medicine, understandable and fascinating in this account of one man's 30-year battle for recognition and compensation. In 1957, Gordon Gould, a Ph.D. candidate at Columbia University, got side-tracked from his doctorate thesis when he became enamored with his discovery of the LASER: Light Amplification by Simulated Emission of Radiation. Gould also felt competitive pressure from colleagues on a similar scientific path. But a misunderstanding of patent law cost Gould his momentum, and he found himself in a battle for the rights after one of his professors claimed the discovery as his own. Gould's background as a dabbler in Communist organizations was used against him to deny his access to work on his own invention. Armed with notarized notebooks bearing the first conceptual drawings of a laser, Gould fought a 30-year, ultimately successful, battle for his rights. Taylor brings obvious appreciation for the drama of scientific discovery and the process of seeking credit for technological innovation to this fascinating true story. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Citadel (July 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806524715
• ISBN-13: 978-0806524719
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,537,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating. A real world techno-thriller., January 4, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War (Hardcover)

According to Thurber, "Man is capable of incredible feats, so long as it is not what he is supposed to be doing at the time." Here is an excellent illustration of Thurber's bedrock psychological principle.

Instead of writing up his doctoral dissertation, which is what he was supposed to be doing at the time, Gordon Gould invented the laser and wrote it up in a notebook to support a patent application. He never finished the dissertation but, thirty years later, after an epic struggle, he finally won his patent.

This is a great book, a techno-thriller and a page turner from beginning to end. It has a subtle and fascinating turning point. Long after Gould's enemies and rivals thought the fight had been wrung out of his patent effort - his patent examiner suggested that the claims might be re-written from a novel point of view. Instead of regarding the invention as an oscillator (which is precisely what Gould invented), one might instead regard his invention as an amplifier.

Gould's long time patent attorney saw immediately that this seemingly trivial change in strategy -- the adoption of a new and rather inaccurate view of the invention -- could break the dam. From this point on, the patent became a kind of juggernaut. A good thing too, because the obstacles set in its path, notably by an obviously corrupted PTO, were amazing.

A beautifully written story about the genius, determination and triumph of Gordon Gould.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars much misunderstanding, April 11, 2005

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Laser: The Inventor, the Noble Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War (Paperback)

Taylor's book attests to the difficulties and perils that individual inventors face, when they have few resources. Of course, rarely is the invention under dispute as pivotal as the laser, which is one of the distinguishing tools of the 20th century.

Several other reviewers have commented that Townes, Maiman,and Schawlow made huge contributions to the field. Yes, but not the invention of the laser. Their contributions came afterwards. Nor were those later contributions under contention by Gould. So when a reviewer makes the above remarks, it is a non-sequiter. Either the reviewer has totally misunderstood the book, or he is deliberately introducing irrelevancies because he can't get around the basic point.

This point was established after long litigation. Gould had clearly conceived of the idea, and had it timestamped. Under longstanding US Patent rules, that idea and its timestamp trumped all others.

Another point mentioned by several reviewers was that Ted Maiman at Hughes Research Labs was the first to reduce it to practice. That is, he was the first to make a functioning laser. But for decades, it has not been a requirement of the US Patent Office that the reduction to practice is necessary in order to be awarded a patent. This wasn't just some rule made up especially for Gould to benefit from. The gist of being awarded a patent is that you have to describe the invention in sufficient detail for someone skilled in the art to construct it. You [the inventor] do NOT have to construct it. Someone ELSE must be able to do so.

Think about it. In general, it is a key property of a patent. That not only the inventor, but someone else can produce the invention. A patent is not a secret recipe.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Courtroom Combat in TechTown, August 16, 2001

By 

Jeremy M. Harris (Worthington, OH USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War (Hardcover)

I had heard intriguing snippets about the strange story of Gordon Gould and the laser, so this book went automatically onto my reading list as soon as I learned that Taylor had written it.

If the laser were an ordinary device like the phonograph or the sewing machine, its undisputed father would be Theodore Maiman of Hughes Aircraft, who designed and built the first operational example (a strobe-pumped ruby rod) in 1960. In the realm of highly scientific inventions, however, things are not so straightforward. The line of credit, including honors and prizes, tends to favor the people who first publish guiding principles, whether or not they actually get anything to work. In the U.S. this point of view spills over into patents, and the initial winner in the race for a broad laser patent was not Maiman but Charles Townes, a distinguished physicist who had invented the maser (a coherent microwave amplifier) and published ideas for extending the concept to visible frequencies, i.e. creating an optical maser.

In 1957 a late-blooming Columbia graduate student named Gordon Gould was suddenly struck by an inspiration for solving the optical maser problem. He subsequently made a number of mistakes in judgment, but failing to document his work was not one of them. He carefully recorded his ideas in a signed and witnessed lab notebook. He even anticipated the acronym "LASER" (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation). Ironically, one of the professors he occasionally interacted with was Charles Townes.

Taylor's book covers the three-decade saga of Gordon Gould's fight for recognition by the United States Patent Office. In a sense the story pits a classic "loser" (Gould) against a classic "winner" (Townes). In the end, neither of those stereotypes matter. The final outcome is governed only by facts on record, the communication skills of the principals and their lawyers, and the sometimes murky mental processes of patent examiners and judges. The twists and turns that lead to that outcome, as expertly navigated by the author, provide a pretty good primer in practical patent law as well as in the basics of laser technology. The human side of the seemingly luckless Gould is also vividly explored. We see that he is usually underestimated by those who don't know him well, and admired by those who do.

The author is not neutral, but he is convincing, and also conscientious about providing a good factual basis for the reader to judge whether or not this landmark intellectual property case was justly decided.