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This is the first page of Gordon Gould's famous notebook, in which he coined the acronym LASER, and described the essential elements for constructing one. This notebook was the focus of a thirty-year court battle for the patent rights to the laser. Notable is the notary's stamp in the upper left corner of the page, dated November 13, 1957. This datestamp established Gould's priority as the first to conceive many of the technologies described in the book.

Text in the image:

[vertical stamp with some handwriting left margin: 
(stamp:) Given to and subscribed before me JACK GOULD
Notary Public, State of New York
(handwriting:) Gordon Gould (stamp continued:) the 23 day of Nov. 1957 No. .. - ... 
Qualified in Bronx County
... ]

[manuscript:]
Some rough calculations on the feasibility
of a LASER: Light Amplification by Stimulateed
Emission of Radiation.

Conceive a tube terminated by optically flat

[Sketch of a horizontal tube with length L and width 2R]

partially reflecting parallel mirrors. The mirrors
might be silvered or multilayer interference
reflectors. The latter are almost lossless and may
have [deleted: an arbitrarily] high reflectance
depending on the number of layers. a
practical achievement is 98% in the visible
for a 7-layer [deleted: filt] reflector (1). Flats with
closer tolerance than 1/100 λ are not available
so if a resonant system is desired, higher
reflectance would not be useful. However,
for a nonresonant system, the 99.9% reflectances
which are possible might be useful.

Consider a plane standing wave in the tube. There
is the effect of a closed cavity since
the [deleted word] wavelength is small the diffraction
and hence the lateral loss is negligible.

(1) O.S. Heavens, "Optical Properties of Thin Solid Films"
(Butterworths Scientific Publications, London 1955). P220.

Gordon Gould notebook

November 1957

Gordon Gould

Fair use rationale for Gordon Gould

The notebook pictured may be copyrighted by Gordon Gould. I believe that its use here is fair use for the articles on Gordon Gould and lasers because:

1. It is a small sample of a larger work
2. It is historically important and cannot be recreated
3. Its use in the context of an encyclopedia article should not in any way interfere with commercial use by Gould's heirs or assigns
4. The image itself is a subject of commentary, including in sources cited in the article.
5. The contents of the notebook are essential to the article on Gould, and a photograph of its first page adds significantly to the article. It may also be valuable in the article on lasers, as the first occurrence of the name.

This image is more important than it may appear to the casual reader. Gould's patent claims hinged critically on the fact that he wrote his ideas down in a notebook, which he dated and had notarized. The first page, in particular, captures several crucial details needed to make a functional laser, and has the first occurrence in print of the acronym LASER to describe the resulting device.--Srleffler (talk) 05:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The image needs to be maintained with sufficient resolution to allow the text to be read, including the notary's stamp, which is discussed in the article.--Srleffler (talk) 06:21, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Laser

The notebook pictured may be copyrighted by Gordon Gould. I believe that its use here is fair use for the articles on Gordon Gould and lasers because:

1. It is a small sample of a larger work
2. It is historically important and cannot be recreated
3. Its use in the context of an encyclopedia article should not in any way interfere with commercial use by Gould's heirs or assigns
4. The image itself is a subject of commentary, including in sources cited in the article.
5. The contents of the notebook are essential to the article on Gould, and a photograph of its first page adds significantly to the article. It may also be valuable in the article on lasers, as the first occurrence of the name.

This image is more important than it may appear to the casual reader. Gould's patent claims hinged critically on the fact that he wrote his ideas down in a notebook, which he dated and had notarized. The first page, in particular, captures several crucial details needed to make a functional laser, and has the first occurrence in print of the acronym LASER to describe the resulting device.--Srleffler (talk) 05:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

The image needs to be maintained with sufficient resolution to allow the text to be read, including the notary's stamp, which is discussed in the article.--Srleffler (talk) 06:21, 1 February 2017 (UTC)