According to ancient — and highly dubious — mythology, a laser beam was first used as a weapon around 215 BCE, when Roman invaders threatened the Grecian city of Syracuse. The legendary Archimedes, a renowned engineer, supposedly deployed a defensive array of weapons, including an array of mirrors that focused sunlight on Roman ships and set them ablaze.
Such was not enough to save Syracuse. The Romans captured and killed Archimedes and sacked the city. Nonetheless, despite debunking by historians, the “Archimedes yarn” inspired uncountable generations of aspiring scientists to develop a modern “death weapon.”
Pulp magazines feasted on “death ray” articles for decades, describing lasers as “invisible rays of heat that ignited anything they touched.” No such weapons appeared. But now military reality seems to be catching up with science fiction.
Science writer Jeff Hecht has pursued laser research for some 40 years. By his account, lasers have served many non-weapon purposes, ranging from television transmissions and drilling oil wells to eye surgery.
The United States made its first serious steps towards developing a military laser during the Eisenhower administration, the aim being a “speed-of-light” defense against Soviet intercontinental missiles. “If lasers could shatter the protective shells of nuclear warheads, they would become the ultimate defensive weapon, trumping nuclear missiles,” Mr. Hecht writes. But try as they might, scientists produced lasers that “could not have killed anything much larger than a fly.” In 1987, the Soviet Union even tried to use laser power to launch a space craft but failed.
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