Uses of Laser

Lasers range in size from microscopic diode lasers (top) with numerous applications, to football field sized neodymiumglass lasers (bottom) used for inertial confinement fusion, nuclear weapons research and other high energy density physics experiments.

Main article: Laser applications

When lasers were invented in 1960, they were called "a solution looking for a problem". Since then, they have become ubiquitous, finding utility in thousands of highly varied applications in every section of modern society, including consumer electronics, information technology, science, medicine, industry, law enforcement, entertainment, and the military.

The first use of lasers in the daily lives of the general population was the supermarket barcode scanner, introduced in 1974. The laserdisc player, introduced in 1978, was the first successful consumer product to include a laser but the compact disc player was the first laser-equipped device to become common, beginning in 1982 followed shortly by laser printers.

Some other uses are:

• Medicine: Bloodless surgery, laser healing, surgical treatment, kidney stone treatment, eye treatment, dentistry
• Industry: Cutting, welding, material heat treatment, marking parts, non-contact measurement of parts
• Military: Marking targets, guiding munitions, missile defence, electro-optical countermeasures (EOCM), alternative to radar, blinding troops.
• Law enforcement: used for latent fingerprint detection in the forensic identification field^[27][28]
• Research: Spectroscopy, laser ablation, laser annealing, laser scattering, laser interferometry, LIDAR, laser capture microdissection, fluorescence microscopy
• Product development/commercial: laser printers, optical discs (e.g. CDs and the like), barcode scanners, thermometers, laser pointers, holograms, bubblegrams.
• Laser lighting displays: Laser light shows
• Cosmetic skin treatments: acne treatment, cellulite and striae reduction, and hair removal.

In 2004, excluding diode lasers, approximately 131,000 lasers were sold with a value of US$2.19 billion. In the same year, approximately 733 million diode lasers, valued at $3.20 billion, were sold.

Examples by power

Laser application in astronomical adaptive optics imaging

Different applications need lasers with different output powers. Lasers that produce a continuous beam or a series of short pulses can be compared on the basis of their average power. Lasers that produce pulses can also be characterized based on the peak power of each pulse. The peak power of a pulsed laser is many orders of magnitude greater than its average power. The average output power is always less than the power consumed.

The continuous or average power required for some uses:

Power	Use
1-5 mW	Laser pointers
5 mW	CD-ROM drive
5–10 mW	DVD player or DVD-ROM drive
100 mW	High-speed CD-RW burner
250 mW	Consumer 16x DVD-R burner
400 mW	Burning through a jewel case including disk within 4 seconds
	DVD 24x dual-layer recording.
1 W	Green laser in current Holographic Versatile Disc prototype development
1–20 W	Output of the majority of commercially available solid-state lasers used for micro machining
30–100 W	Typical sealed CO2 surgical lasers
100–3000 W	Typical sealed CO2 lasers used in industrial laser cutting
5 kW	Output power achieved by a 1 cm diode laser bar
100 kW	Claimed output of a CO2 laser being developed by Northrop Grumman for military (weapon) applications

Examples of pulsed systems with high peak power:

• 700 TW (700×10¹² W) – National Ignition Facility, a 192-beam, 1.8-megajoule laser system adjoining a 10-meter-diameter target chamber.
• 1.3 PW (1.3×10¹⁵ W) – world's most powerful laser as of 1998, located at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory

Hobby uses

In recent years, some hobbyists have taken interests in lasers. Lasers used by hobbyists are generally of class IIIa or IIIb, although some have made their own class IV types. However, compared to other hobbyists, laser hobbyists are far less common, due to the cost and potential dangers involved. Due to the cost of lasers, some hobbyists use inexpensive means to obtain lasers, such as salvaging laser diodes from broken DVD players (red), Blu-ray players (violet), or even higher power laser diodes from CD or DVD burners.

Hobbyists also have been taking surplus pulsed lasers from retired military applications and modifying them for pulsed holography. Pulsed Ruby and pulsed YAG lasers have been used.

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and Its Abolition

International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition, August 23 of each year, the day designated by UNESCO to memorialize the transatlantic slave trade. That date was chosen by the UNESCO Executive Board's adoption of resolution 29 C/40 at its 29th session. Circular CL/3494 of July 29, 1998 from the Director-General invited Ministers of Culture to promote the day. The date is significant because, during the night of August 22 to August 23, 1791 on the island of Saint Domingue (now known as Haiti), an uprising began which set forth events which were a major factor in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

UNESCO Member States organize events every year on that date, inviting participation from young people, educators, artists and intellectuals. As part of the goals of the intercultural UNESCO project, "The Slave Route", it is an opportunity for collective recognition and focus on the "historic causes, the methods and the consequences" of slavery. Additionally, it sets the stage for analysis and dialogue of the interactions which gave rise to the transatlantic trade in human beings between Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Caribbean.

The International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition was first celebrated in a number of countries, in particular in Haiti (23 August 1998) and Senegal (23 August 1999). A number of cultural events and debates were organized. In 2001 the Mulhouse Textile Museum in France conducted a fabric workshop entitled "Indiennes de Traite" (a type of calico) used as currency in trade for Africans. The International Slavery Museum opened its doors on August 23, 2007 in Liverpool where Slavery Remembrance Day events have been conducted since 2004.

Erotic furniture and style sex

Erotic furniture, represents any form of furniture that can act as an aid to sexual intercourse. Whilst almost anything can be used for this purpose, the most common form of furniture employed for sex is the bed, but couches and sofas come a close second. These are not strictly erotic furniture, as their primary use is not erotic.

Specifically designed furniture for erotic purposes can include

• Devices for spanking and flagellation such as the Berkley Horse
• Sex swings
• Devices for using gravity to aid in lovemaking without the use of complicated slings.
• Fisting slings
• Various types of angled foam wedges or specially designed pillows that support various sex positions. See Liberator shapes for example or the ergonomically based Lovebumpers.
• Bondage equipment such as stocks and pillories
• Smotherboxes and other queening stools.
• the Love Chair, a curious chair made of curved tubular steel, articulated in several ways and designed to facilitate otherwise impossible sexual acts. This device was advertised in men's magazines in the mid-1970s, and is seen in at least one of Nina Hartley's Guide to videos, but it is no longer commercially available.
• Sawhorses, which are shaped much like the version used for carpentry, but have a sharpened edge and is primarily sat on to achieve a feeling similar to a crotch rope in bondage.

King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, who was heavily overweight, used a specially constructed "love seat" (siege d'amour) when he visited the famous brothel, Le Chabanais in Paris. The piece still exists and is exhibited at the Musée de l'Erotisme in Pigalle.

See also Edward Gorey's The Curious Sofa, (1961), a neo-Victorian pseudo-porno send-up consisting of non-illustrations—there's always a potted palm or something in the way. One caption reads "That evening in the library Scylla, one of the guests who had certain anatomical peculiarities, demonstrated the 'Lithuanian Typewriter', assisted by Ronald and Rupert, two remarkably well-set-up young men from the village." The Curious Sofa of the title is approached with some misgivings by the house-party guests at the end.