July 28th is Charles Townes birthday. Townes was the American physicist who created the first working maser. A maser is a device that was the precursor to the laser that amplifies microwave radiation instead of light. Townes worked on a system that used ammonia molecules in a cylindrical cage with metal rods. The rods would be alternately charged to produce an electric field that would excite the electrons in the ammonia and separate excited ions from unexcited ions. The excited ions left the end of the resonator through a small hole. The resulting radiation was of very low power, on the order of a microwatt, but the wavelength was constant.
Masers operate using a different method now, but the principle is the same. They are used to amplify microwaves, radar, and even in radio astronomy to detect very weak signals over a great distance. Find out what else occurred on this day in science history.
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