Commercial/industrial lasers in a demanding environment: In the commercial/industrial environment, lasers are a unique source of power for tasks ranging from materials processing to printing to optical recording

It is hard even for “old hands” to recognize that practical lasers have been around for a quarter century. At first, these new kinds of light sources, with their remarkably increased light generation capabilities, were used in the laboratory, where scientists traditionally turn quickly to each new tool that can open up additional ways of looking at the physical world. Engineering applications developed much more slowly.