The 1918-1920 flu pandemic will ultimately claim 50 million lives worldwide. The strange tale of the Norden bombsight - TED Photo Credit: German Federal Archives / Wikimedia Commons. In a Ph.D. thesis on the optical properties of gas discharges, the Soviet scientist Valentin Fabrikant suggested the possibility of forcing a gas system away from thermal equilibrium to an energy state favoring stimulated emission. Over 170 countries sign an indefinite extension to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. As part of a larger proposal to rename OSA The Optics and Photonics Society, the flagship magazine of the society, Optics News, is renamed Optics & Photonics News. Photo: Troops "going over the top" at the start of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Photo Credit: Curt Suplee, National Science Foundation. Photo: The NASDAQ Composite intex spiked in the late 1990s and then fell sharply as a result of the dot-com bubble. Yalta Conference 2/1945. The device uses a synthetic ruby one cm in diameter, pumped by an external flashlamp. Working on the problem of radio wave detection from communications satellites, Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson are surprised to discover a low-frequency background hum that would eventually be interpreted as the thermal echo of the Big Bang. Hans Dehmelt shares the Nobel Prize in Physics with Wolfgang Paul for the ion trap, a method of precisely measuring ions and subatomic particles. Soviet scientists Alexander Prokhorov and Nicolay Basov outline the theoretical principles for a microwave oscillator, based on ammonia, at the All-Union Conference on Radio-Spectroscopy of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences. The . She would also become President of the European Council and only the second woman to chair the G8. In all, the space agency launched 135 shuttle missions. Connect with an unparalleled global network of leading optics and photonics professionals. Over the next 34 years, the program will grow to encompass more than 350 chapters distributed worldwide. In an article in Physical Review, Nicolas Bloembergen of Harvard University proposes a new maser design using solid-state materials in a multiple-energy-level system. The technique, known as quality- or Q-switching, brings lasers into the arena of industrial applications, such as welding, requiring high peak powers. The English-language version of the Treatise on Physiological Optics, a key (and massive) early OSA publishing effort, was issued in three volumes in 1924 and 1925. Since 1977, Optics Letters (OL) has been advancing the science of optics and photonics by publishing high-quality papers rapidly. In a paper in Physical Review Letters, Arthur Ashkin of AT&T Bell Labs reports the trapping of atoms using radiation pressure from laser light. Photo: Changes in national boundaries after the end of the cold war. A week after Hitler's death by suicide, the German armed forces surrender to the allies in Rheims, France, and Berlin, Germany. The society announces a strategic partnership with the Optoelectronics Industry Development Association (OIDA), a preeminent organization representing the optoelectronics industry. Ball Aerospace completed the COSTAR project in just 28 months. The Max Born Award recognizes contributions to physical optics. The technique would subsequently grow into an extremely important commercial technology and platform. The month of March features a landmark history of OSAs first 50 years by Hilda Kingslake, published in JOSA, and a 50th anniversary OSA meeting in Washington, DC, USA, including invited papers by Charles Townes, Willis Lamb, and other luminaries. In a change to the organization's by-laws, OSA creates a new board responsible for coordinating editorial and journal activities, with the chair of the board to sit on OSA's board of directors. The network would ultimately evolve into the Internet. Philips demonstrates a compact disc audio player and optical disk. Highlights include a 75th anniversary symposium featuring luminaries such as Nicolaas Bloembergen, Herwig Kogelnik and Arthur Schawlow, and How I Got into Optics and Optics in 1916 exhibits in the meeting's main exhibit hall. Photo: A laserdisc (left) compared with a DVD (right). OSA moves into the new communications vehicle, the World Wide Web, and ups its game in electronic communications with its OpticsNet web site; its initial e-newsletters OSA Contents and OSA Early Notice, also appearing in 1994; and its first CD-ROM, delivered in 1995 and including the entire 1994 volume of Optics Letters as well as the Optics Index. The December 1953 number of JOSA noted the death of Fred E. Wright (d. 25 August 1953), who served as the society's second president from 1918 to 1919, and Herbert E. Ives (d. 13 November 1953), a huge figure in OSA history who endowed the society's first medal, served as its sixth president (1924-25), and made signal contributions to its long-term stability, its efforts in colorimetry, and more. Photo: COSTAR being inserted into Hubble during First Servicing Mission. Photo: Alexander Prokhorov (left) and Nicolay Basov (right). Photo Credit: National Institute of Standards and Technology. Eighth Air Force Operations in England - 398th This article appears in: September 2009. . Photo Credit: By Windell Oskay from Sunnyvale, CA, USA (Bell Labs 004) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. They publish their findings in the American Journal of Ophthalmology in December, launching the field of laser-based refractive surgery. Chu will share the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics for his research with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, then at the Collge de France, and William D. Phillips, at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, who also did pioneering work in optical trapping and sub-Doppler cooling. Rossi and J.P. Donnelly build an InGaAsP laser emitting continuously at 1.1 micrometers at room temperature. The work would win the Nobel Prize nearly four decades later. All three share the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. Photo: Space Shuttle Discovery approaching the International Space Station during STS-128. Photo: Example of a multifractal electronic eigenstate at the Anderson localization transition in a system with 1367631 atoms. Samuel Blum, Srinivasan Rangaswamy and James Wynne observe the effect of ultraviolet excimer laser light on biological materials. The Second-Generation Norden Bombsight Vault at the former McCook Army Air Base near McCook, Nebraska, is an example of the structures used by the military to help ensure the secrecy of this advanced technology device during World War II. (Photo: The free-electron laser FELIX at the FOM Institute for Plasma Physics Rijnhuizen (nl), Nijmegen, The Netherlands.). Anyone within the path of totality saw one of natures most awe-inspiring sights - a total solar eclipse. The Japanese imperial army would occupy the region - reconfigured as the puppet state Manchukuo - through 1945. Touch Bionics launches the i-limb hand, the first powered prosthetic hand with articulating fingers. Oculus VR releases the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset to consumers. The Mark XI (or Mark 11) advanced aerial bombing to a semi-scientific level, substantially reducing the element of luck involved in bomb runs and making it feasible for bombers to occasionally score a direct hit on a warship or other target from 5,000 feet. Doolittle "Mark Twain" Bombsight - San Diego Air & Space Museum The first successful message is sent over the US Defense Departments new experimental network, to Stanford University, USA, by a graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Some estimates suggest that the worm ultimately infected up to 20% of all computers worldwide. Photo: Adolph Hitler leads Nazi followers in the failed "Beer Hall Putsch," landing Hitler in jail. OSA's third journal, founded with the specific aim of providing rapid publication of cutting-edge results, begins publication under the leadership of its first editor-in-chief, Robert W. Terhune. Photo: Herbert Ives (left) and Fred Wright (right). The Euro becomes the official currency of 12 of the European Union Member nations, and becomes, after the U.S. dollar, the world's second-most-traded currency. The iconic annual Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics gets its start from the merger of two earlier meetings, the Conference on Laser Engineering and Applications (begun in 1967) and the Conference on Laser and Electro-Optical Systems (begun in 1976). (Photo: Charles Townes with an ammonia maser. YouTube has 65 employees and one of the largest followings on the Internet. During his tenure, OSA membership will pass the 15,000 mark. Working with Carnegie Mellon colleagues, Eric Betzig and a Bell Labs team squeeze 45 billion bits of data into a square-inch of disk space using a novel magneto-optical data storage technique. Photo: Logo for the International Geophysical Year. Publication of the Review would be taken over by the American Institute of Physics in 1937. By growing the computers 178 transistors on a quartz wafer, the researchers are able to align 99.5 percent along the crystals regular structure. Photo: Time Magazine highlights "Cold Fusion". Photo: Cuba - An aerial view showing the medium range ballistic missile field launch site number two at Sagua la Grande. Photo: Dolly the sheep, National Museums of Scotland, Edinburgh. Photo Credit: Courtesy John W. Thomlinson, Princeton, NJ. Weapons systems technology of 1948 made for US Army Air Force. John Bowers and Mario Paniccia of Intel announce demonstration of the first electrically powered hybrid silicon laser using standard silicon manufacturing processes. Photo: Nick Holonyak Jr. in his laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Ill., USA. Photo: Roy Glauber, Ted Hnsch and Jan Hall in a light-hearted moment with Susan Houde-Walter at the 2005 Frontiers in Optics meeting, Tucson, Ariz. Angela Merkel is sworn in as Germanys first woman chancellor. Photo: Holography pioneers Emmett Leith (left) and Juris Upatnieks in 1965. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons / University of Rochester Public Relations / Elizabeth Lamark. Developed by Roger Easton, the NTS-2 relied on a passive ranging technique and atomic clocks. Priest, OSA's 1928-29 president. After a 50-year search for the Higgs boson, it's revealed in an experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. 6 languages An early bombsight, 1910s 1923 Norden MK XI Bombsight Prototype A bombsight is a device used by military aircraft to drop bombs accurately. OSA's annual meeting is rechristened with the name it bears today. OSA announces that its headquarters building will be named for Jarus Quinn, who served as OSA's first Executive Director from 1969-1994. At the February Board of Directors Meetings, student members were established as a new class of membership. The result is the Journal of Optical Communications and Networking (JOCN), which launches in June 2009. It was a number of years before the general public was made aware of what had been happening at . Zhores Alferov, Herbert Kroemer and Jack Kilby receive the Nobel Prize in Physics for basic work on information and communication technology. Photo: Intel Labs Fellow Mario Paniccia (at right) with Professor John Bowers of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Photo: OSA's Student Chapter at the Universidad Autnoma de Nuevo Len, Mexico.