English: A homemade laser pistol that shoots a laser beam, constructed by Stanford University physics professor K. H. Sherwin in 1964, four years after the laser was invented, to demonstrate to his classes how lasers work. The body (left), recycled from a toy raygun, holds a pencil size ruby rod and two flashtubes.(right). It is attached by wire to a 200 watt-second high voltage power supply. When the trigger is pulled, the flashtubes go off, creating a pulse of red laser light from the rod. The coherent light pulse is powerful enough to pop a blue balloon (shown at left); but not a red one, since it reflects the red light.

Alterations to image: cleaned up some dark areas around the circuit board on the left that looked to be artifacts from the page scan.