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Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War

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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.

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.

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.

LASER by Nick Taylor is a 304 page biography of Gordon Gould, inventor of the laswer. There are 8 pages of glossy black and white photos. The book will be especially interesting for readers with a background in patent law. In view of Mr.Gould's various sweeties and his adventures on his sailboat (all disclosed in this book), it seems like his story might make a suitable film (but I don't think that any biographical film has been made). Unlike other stories about inventors who are giants in the field of science Gordon Gould never saw poverty, never had a tragic ending, and was never characterized as being an oddball. This is in contrast to Edwin Armstrong whose career was bludgeoned by David Sarnoff of RCA, and to Nikola Tesla, whose eccentric qualities are emphasized by his biographers.

EARLY YEARS. We learn that Gould's father worked for a magazine called Scholastic, that his family lived in Scarsdale, NY, and that in 1937 he got a scholarship to MIT, but instead attended Union College in Schenectady, NY. At Union, a teacher named Studer inspired Mr.Gould's interest in light. In 1941, Gould enrolled in Yale's doctor program in physics (at the same time, Gould's younger brother was a Yale chemistry undergrad). Gould earned a master's degree, then dropped out in 1944 to work for the Manhattan Project (at Broadway & 137th Street). The goal was to test isotope separation, which involved passing uranium hexafluoride gas through 4,000 membranes to isolate U-235. We learn of Gould's interest in females, including Ruth at Yale, a Quaker named Caroline, Glen from Virginia (pages 21-26), and several others. Unfortunately for Gould, Glen was interested in communism, and she inspired Mr.Gould to attend meetings of communists. This got him fired from the Manhattan Project and, for his entire career, Gould's inability to obtain security clearance prevented him from being cleared to work on government-funded projects for private companies.

MIRRORS. Then, Gould started work at a nearby mirror company (between Morton St. and Barrow St.). Mirror-making involved powdered chromium, aluminum powder, and silicon monoxide. Gould's job was to find out why the mirrors were wavy and blotchy. After 2 weeks, Gould figured out how to adjust certain filaments, and the result was perfect mirrors. This experience undoubtedly helped him later to invent the laser, because lasers involve translucent mirrors. At this time, Gould and Glen attended communist meetings, and they married in 1947.

COLUMBIA. Gould entered Columbia Univ.'s graduate program in physics, where his colleagues included Prof. Charles Townes, later to receive Nobel Prize in for inventing laser. Other folks at Columbia were Arthur Schawlow (in Feb. 1958, he got the same idea for a 2-mirror design that Gould thought of in Nov.1957, for the laser); Prof.Isodor Rabi (Nobel Prize in 1944 for vapor beam machine with magnets), Prof.Polykarp Kusch (Gould's graduate advisor and Nobel Prize winner in 1955 for discovering magnetic moment of electron). In 1950, Gould dumped his wife because of her commitment to communism (she was happy when N.Korea invaded S.Korea in 1950). In April 1954, Townes designed the first maser (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation). The device involved separating ground state ammonia from excited ammonia. Gould's project with Prof.Kusch was to apply the maser to thallium. Gould succeeded, and acquired thallium enriched in metastable state (p. 56-59). Gould found a new sweetie, Ruth, a biophysics Ph.D., and married her in 1955). In summer of 1957, Gould got the idea of using optical pumping to amplify visible light waves (not just microwaves), that is, to apply the maser's principles to light waves. Townes got the same idea later on, in Sept. 1957. On Nov. 13, 1957, Gould invented the laser, which involved potassium (K) vapor as the medium, where K atoms are optically pumped to a high energy level by light from an external K arc lamp, where the atoms would give up their energy while coherently amplifying a light beam, and where the beam would bounce off mirrors at each end of the tube, growing into a powerful beam of pure color, and eventually break through a translucent mirror (this is where mirrors come in) at one end (p. 67-70). Gould voluntarily dropped out of grad school in March 1958, since Prof.Kusch wanted him to work on a boring project. Gould consulted a patent attorney in Jan.1958, but unfortunately, Gould made the fatal mistake of failing to realize that you could get a prophetic patent (where there were no working examples). Townes and Schawlow filed their laser patent on July 30, 1958 ("Maswers and Maser Communication System") (p. 79).

GOULD at TRG. Gould began work at TRG in Manhattan, where his project was atomic beam frequency standards, but at night Gould worked on laser calculations. Gould's boss at TRG was Dick Daly, but eventually TRG's president Larry Goldmuntz learned of Gould's laser, and in 1958, put Gould full-time on the laser project (p. 73-86). Gould filed his laser patent application on April 6, 1958 (U.S. Ser. No. 804,540), with the approval of Goldmuntz.

TRG won a laser contract and Gould continued at TRG, but was restricted in his access to data, because he failed to obtain security clearance (p. 96-114). On march 22, 1960, Schawlow and Townes got their patent, U.S. Pat. No. 2,929,922. In August 1959, Theodore Maiman made the first working laser (it contained a ruby rod). In 1960, Gould (still married to Ruth the biophysicist) began a tryst with Marcie Weiss, a security guard at TRG. Goldmuntz then let Marcie go, for fear that the U.S. government would revoke its contracts with TRG. Then Ruth sent Gould packing, and he obtained a bachelor pad. Ali Javan of Bell Labs made a continuous beam laser using helium metastable atoms (p. 125). We learn that Gould had preceded Javan with this invention, as demonstrated by Gould's earlier patent. Javan and William Bennett filed a patent together on a pulsed laser. In Dec. 1961, Gould had a breakthrough and Gould, Jacobs, and Rabinowitz (of TRG) published a paper on cesium vapor in a helium lamp (p. 131). March 1962 brought another breakthrough, where theybuilt the first optically pumped gas laser (unfortunately, the book fails to mention any patents arising from the Dec. 1, 1961 and March 1962 breakthroughs). Page 137-138 reveal Milton Zaret's invention of a laser eye surgery, which he perfected using rabbits and Gould's laser. At this point, Townes began work at MIT and Schawlow began a faculty position at Stanford.

PATENT INTERFERENCE. Regarding patents, on Bell Lab's side were attorneys Cave, Torsiglieri, Braunstein, and Kelley. On Gould's side were only 2 attorneys, Keegan and Overocker. Gould's earliest date showing conception was in 1957 lab notebook, which discussed the same elements as in Bell Labs' patent: (1) Potassium; (2) Pumping; (3) Cavity for radiation. The filing date of Schawlow and Townes was July 1958. Gould's filing date was later, April 1959. Thus, Gould had an uphill battle in the Interference Proceeding of proving earlier conception, enablement, and diligence. A problem was that Gould's lab notebooks failed to state that side walls of the cavity were transparent (p. 159), and Gould lost the Interference, and he also lost the appeal on the grounds that the instructions in his lab notebook were ambiguous (p. 173). At this point, Townes plus 2 Russians shared the Nobel Prize for the laser in 1964.

BROOKLYN POLY. TRG merged with Control Data Corp. of Minneapolis, MN, and Gould became slightly wealthy. In 1967, Gould left TRG for Brooklyn Poly, and took TRG's laser research team with him. Gould was full professor, even though he'd never completed his Ph.D. program at Columbia. At this time, Gould won a patent Interference against Fox and Kibler of Bell Labs. Gould's first grad student at Brooklyn Poly was Bob Chementi, who worked on copper vapor laser (p. 177), and the result was a laser that could scan photographs without destroying them (p. 193). Also, at this time Gould got another patent, U.S. Pat. No. 3,388,314, on June 11, 1968. At this time, Townes left MIT for U.C.Berkeley.

OPTELECOM. In 1973, Gould left Brooklyn Poly and began work at Optelecom, headed by Bill Culver, a guidance system company. Culver used lasers to guide missiles, and Gould's idea was to replace Culver's deuterated ammonia with carbon-13 methyl fluoride (p. 197). In 1977, Gould received U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,845 (October 1977). At this point, Gould was very happy, because newly issued patents had a term of 17 years from the date of issue, and this patent had been filed some18 years earlier. (If Gould had filed this patent in the year 1995 or later, this sort of stunt would have been impossible. For applications filed on or after June 8, 1995, the patent term is 20 years from the filing date.) At Optelecom, Gould made an invention relating to geology -- optical fibers using neutron ulse generators to bombard rocks deep under the ground, where data represented the presence or absence of oil. Gould got 5 patents (p. 277). In 1981, Arthur Schawlow got a Nobel Prize, not for inventing the laswer, but for laser spectroscopy. (There is a typo on page 232. "Lynch pin" should be "linch pin.")

I also recommend the following book relating to inventions and patent law: The Telephone Patent Conspiracy of 1876: The Elisha Gray-Alexander Bell Controversy and Its Many Players by A. Edward Evenson. As is the case with LASER, Mr.Evenson's book provides a dramatic book, having many cliff-hangers, while refraining from digressing into writing of a decorative or fictional nature.

I wrote a review of this book for Wired Magazine, December 2000, p. 370, in the Streetcred section, under the title "Flash of Recognition." I won't repeat it all here, since you can find it online.

Basically, I loved the book. I state that "As told by Nick Taylor in Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty-Year Patent War, the story makes for a ripping yarn. Taylor manages to weave together the scientific workings of lasers, the intricacies of the US patent system, and the strange details of Gordon Gould's quirks and predicaments." Except for one minor quibble, I conclude that "Taylor does a great job of pulling together science, law, business, and human drama." If you're interested in those things, in a story made suspenseful even if you happen to know how it comes out, then you'll enjoy Nick Taylor's book.

-Edward Samuels, author of The Illustrated Story of Copyright (December 2000)

If you ever had a fantasy about being the first to invent something completely revolutionary, outside of a corporate setting, and then getting a patent and having the industry come to you to get permission to make the invention, you must read this book, which will give you a rude reality check.

Having talked to experts about this book, the book is accurate about the patent process and the book is fair about giving credit to others who Gould used to come up with the laser (principally, Townes, who invented the maser, a predecessor of the laser, which works with microwaves).

The book gives a good scorecard of who are the major players.

The terrors of a Patent Office "interference" practice comes to light, and the bias of bureaucracy when they want to dig in their heels and favor one side over the other, simply because of bureaucratic inertia and spite.

The only downside is the book had one passage that was repeated verbatim, which means it was not carefully proofed, at least the copy I had.

The book makes one factual mistake: it says that under the new law, with the term of a patent being not 17 years from when the patent issues but 20 years from when the patent is filed, would have avoided Gould's problem (he had to wait 30 years to get his patent, with a lot of uncertainty). Actually however, the Patent Office today still has the potential for what Gould's problem was: it's called "interference", when two inventors legally claim to have invented the same thing. This was the heart of Gould's problem, with the Patent Office taking sides with other inventors who filed before Gould even though Gould had invented certain aspects of the laser first (the critical amplifier portion of a laser). Even today the Patent Office has a 'first to invent' not a 'first to file' system, unlike the rest of the world, supposedly to protect the small inventor.

I must admit a prejudice against Gordon Gould and his claim to have invented the laser. I have been a target of the Patlex Corporation's high-handed and bullying tactics, even though I have never challenged Patlex legally nor attempted to circumvent their royalty requirements. Mr. Taylor's book is certainly of value--it is the first document I have read which describes Mr. Gould's life and work in any detail--but I am afraid that I leave its pages still unconvinced. More than anything else, the book labors to confirm my suspicion that trial attorneys are often nothing more than robbers, assaulting their victims with courtrooms rather than with handguns. I imagine that when Dr. Charles Townes walked out of that courtroom in Orlando, he probably felt like he had been mugged. Theodore Maiman, the Hughes physicist who created the first working laser, has almost taken personal blame for Gould's victory--he elected not to testify at the Orlando trial, which he describes as a "travesty of justice." Borrowing the words of Stan Augarten, who applied them to a similar priority battle in the development of the electronic computer, a lawsuit is one thing and historical judgment another. Maiman and Townes and Schawlow have lost their legal claims to the invention of the laser, but their historical position is unshakable.

Legal victory is not always a guarantee of truth. Sure, David going up against Goliath to win millions of dollars makes for a great read. In this case, however, it simply didn't happen that way. Schawlow, Townes, Maiman, et al. have contributed many, many other things to the field (in fact, Schawlow's Nobel was for research primarily in the 1970's). What has Gould done? He spent his time villifying and stealing credit (Schawlow and Townes never received royalty payments on the laser because of contractual obligations to Bell Labs). The best way to read this book is as a biased work of fiction.