World LASER 60th Anniversary and Four Decades First Thai Beam

By Keattisak Sripimanwat (D.Eng) - Thailand Chapter Chair

Based on a pre-seminar and a successful project of “Light & Quantum Milestones” that was supported by the IEEE Foundation in 2019, it was consequently extended to another important milestone on the International Day of Light (IDL) 2020 (www.quantum-thai.org/idl-2020-thailand), celebrating the 60th anniversary of the invention of laser by Theodore Maiman. The Thai ComSoc Chapter celebrated this anniversary jointly at IDL 2020 with the 40th anniversary of a related story.

In 1980, the first Thai laser was beamed at King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology (KMITL) with the underserved environment of 40 years ago. From the previous year, a seminar that tracked back its history in order to survey how innovation had been created in such an environment, was organized. This year’s project is then to build those contents up as a movie with seminars. However, due to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, the entire 2020 activities were converted to online events.

On May 16, the honored opening speech of IDL 2020 was given by Dr. Kosol Petchsuwan, the former KMITL rector. Following by a full story of local laser invention, two parts on the oral history and technical story were released at https://youtu.be/sfBg6MB44O4 & https://youtu.be/QLpKDo_dQA8 respectively. As a result, we produced another consequential output for the chapter’s series on “Learning History for the Better Future.” Moreover, based on this year’s experience and infrastructure, it will also result continuously to a further short movie for the coming year, “The Golden Jubilee Hologram & Milestone.”

The Thai ComSoc chapter would like to thank all supporters and sponsors: the Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology (IPST) and faculty of engineering at KMITL. Hopefully, this 2020 movie could stimulate various target groups of audiences. The story of this local technological history should be another source of inspiration for students, researchers and many others.