When lasers were invented in 1960, they were called "a solution looking for a problem". Since then, they have become ubiquitous, finding utility in thousands of highly varied applications in every section of modern society, including consumer electronics, information technology, science, medicine, industry, law enforcement, entertainment, and the military. Fiber-optic communication using lasers is a key technology in modern communications, allowing services such as the Internet.
The first use of lasers in the daily lives of the general population was the supermarket barcode scanner, introduced in 1974. The laserdisc player, introduced in 1978, was the first successful consumer product to include a laser but the compact disc player was the first laser-equipped device to become common, beginning in 1982 followed shortly by laser printers.
Some other uses are:
Communications: besides fiber-optic communication, lasers are used for free-space optical communication, including laser communication in space.
Medicine: see below.
Industry: cutting including converting thin materials, welding, material heat treatment, marking parts (engraving and bonding), additive manufacturing processes such as selective laser sintering and selective laser melting, non-contact measurement of parts.
Military: marking targets, guiding munitions, missile defense, electro-optical countermeasures (EOCM), lidar, blinding troops. See below
Law enforcement: LIDAR traffic enforcement. Lasers are used for latent fingerprint detection in the forensic identification field
Research: spectroscopy, laser ablation, laser annealing, laser scattering, laser interferometry, lidar, laser capture microdissection, fluorescence microscopy, metrology, laser cooling.
Commercial products: laser printers, barcode scanners, thermometers, laser pointers, holograms, bubblegrams.
Entertainment: optical discs, laser lighting displays, laser turntables
In 2004, excluding diode lasers, approximately 131,000 lasers were sold with a value of US$2.19 billion. In the same year, approximately 733 million diode lasers, valued at $3.20 billion, were sold.
