Charles Townes, J. P. Gordon (both pictured), and H. J. Zeiger build the first microwave amplifier, the MASER. Three years later, work begins on the LASER, an amplifier working under the same principle in the optical regime. (See also Phys. Rev. Focus 15, story 4.) The 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to Nikolay Basov and Aleksandr Prokhorov, and to Charles Townes.