Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

 

Andy Thompson wrote:

  Light?I'm awed by those who manipulate electricity. Sorcery, I call it. The workof Beelzebub. I mean, WHY, exactly, do a bunch of particles too small tosee zooming along a wire make things work? And why can they kill you? I'vehad the water analogy explained to me a million times, but I still don'tget it. I'm going to go and live in a cave. AndyT.  M400 #1145: Wondering if steam power might work.

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Greetings Andy and gang ,  Almost everyone these days
encounters lasers whether they realise it or not. Every CD/DVD
player, autofocus on some cameras, and your high-speed
fiber-optics commlink use semiconductor lasers.

Let's not forget the little laser pointers used in conference
rooms,power-tools, surveying gear, etc.

Lasers can heal in medicine,can measure the very small
as in interferometers,can etch photomasks for semiconductors,
and also monitor your speed on the motorways.

When kicked-up a few notches,they can precisely cut
metals,plastics,glass etc . And create awesome visual displays.
If any of you have the Pink Floyd video "The Delicate Sound
Of Thunder ", you can see a stagehand lighting his cigarette
using a laser beam . This is part of the intro credits.

My favorite apps. of little HeNe lasers at home is to
tease the cats with moving points of light. And to temporarily
extinguish streetlights by pointing the beam precisely at the
photocontrol atop the streetlight.

As with everything   produced, lasers can be used for goodor bad .
I think it's safe to say that the lasers of sci-fi films blasting
everything/everybody in their path are still in far future.....I hope.

Until then, I'm looking forward to a "LaserTron" that
creates its own visual light show when played. "Brightest"
8 seconds ever !   Cheers, --JK--(incoherent lighting collector)