About 49 years ago, as a fledgling electrical engineer at the Westinghouse Defense Center in Baltimore, Md., I had a fortunate occasion that transformed my career into one of the most exciting experiences in my life. I was developing and testing electronic timing/counting circuits for airborne radar systems. I was also bored to death and wondering why I had dragged my young wife up from Texas to live in this “foreign land,” far from friends, relatives and good Mexican food.

My engineering manager approached me just before lunch one day in June 1961 and showed me a copy of Scientific American magazine. “Here, read this article about a helium-neon laser that has been created at Bell Labs,” he said. “We want to build the second one, and I want to know if you would like to have this assignment.”

I read the article, struggled through the quantum mechanics, modern physics and optics, and couldn’t imagine any practical applications for this curious device. I also couldn’t think of anything else that I wanted to do, so I returned from lunch and responded with, “Why not?”

We had the HeNe lasing before year’s end. Then we set out to build a ruby laser like famed physicist Ted Maiman invented at Hughes. When we got it to operate, we focused the beam with a lens on a razor blade and blew a hole in it. Now we knew the potential application; we had the ultimate weapon to blow ICBMs out of the sky and save our nation from nuclear destruction!

The Department of Defense caught the laser fever; within months, research and development dollars for laser technology began to flow. We tried to make more powerful lasers by discovering other materials that would lase. (Someone even reported they had made Jell-O lase.) We built higher-powered lasers and sent them to military labs for more testing. Laser weapons research continued, and many devices have been developed that have made our military more efficient and our country safer.

Many more unique, useful laser applications have been developed in medicine, surgery, telecommunication, manufacturing, homeland security, lighting, displays, and nanotechnology. Lasers are an enabling technology that has provided new solutions to difficult problems, made our country a secure place and improved our quality of life.

I’m so glad I’m a part of this scientific achievement. I’m an engineer and an educator; I didn’t discover the laser, but I’m proud to have helped in its development. I believe careers in science, engineering and technology provide incredible, rewarding opportunities for young people who are curious and want to make a difference.

What would our lives be like today without lasers? Laser applications include the low-power laser beams that scan “bar codes” when we buy products at the grocery store; LASIK eye surgery, in which a laser can correct nearsightedness, farsightedness and/or astigmatism; and laser printers and copiers.

This year we’re celebrating 50 years of lasers across our country with events like the laser light show we will experience next Saturday, blending the best of creative art and music.

Through the generous contributions of Texas State Technical College, Baylor University and the city of Waco, more than 200 science teachers from schools in the Greater Waco vicinity are our guests for a concert and celebration. They will be hosted at a reception and tour of Baylor’s spectacular new science building; transported to Waco Hall on City of Waco buses; and provided tickets for the symphony concert by TSTC and OP-TEC, Waco’s National Center for Optics and Photonics Education, a National Science Foundation Center of Excellence.

TSTC is the nation’s leader in laser technician education. They’ve educated thousands of laser technicians since the program began in 1970. These men and women are working in critical energy and defense labs and in other laser establishments throughout the world.

Baylor uses lasers for education and research in several of its science labs. For more than eight years Baylor and TSTC have cooperated in laser research through Baylor’s Center for Astrophysics, Space Physics and Engineering Research.

The laser light show will take place during a performance of Jon Barrett’s “Oscillate,” a musical reflection on what the composer, a Baylor graduate student, refers to as “the never-ending ballet of patterns, interconnected and interdependent with one another, large and small,” that bind all things together — patterns in the heavens, in the natural world, even in the inner workings of the human body.

The piece is also a study in the juxtaposition of opposites. Barrett, winner of Baylor’s Symphony Overture Competition, will conduct.

Dan Hull, who once worked on laser systems development for NASA and other agencies, now oversees the National Center for Optics and Photonics Education in Waco, established at the request of the National Science Foundation.