Ancient Web: Mike Harrison's Big Laser Page Saved a Workshop Experiment

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Mike Harrison's workshop found itself in possession of a discarded industrial laser tube that was roughly three feet long. Naturally, it eventually became the subject of a personal webpage titled Fun with a BIG laser!

Read the original laser project

Harrison's site, Mike's Electric Stuff, is already a large electronics resource, but this individual episode deserves attention as a complete early-web experimental diary. He says the ion laser tubes were rescued from a scrapyard and may have come from prototype medical systems. Two seemed unusable. The third, a Coherent Innova 90 krypton tube, appeared physically intact.

The account chronicles research, attempts that failed to produce laser output, an extremely improvised test setup, and eventually the first glimpse of a beam. It is presented through long paragraphs and a sequence of big embedded photographs rather than a modern video tutorial.

The pictures are part of the evidence

The page shows a salvaged tube, instruments, cooling equipment, and a bench crowded with hardware. Captions identify particular parts of the experiment, including metering and optical-alignment equipment. One photograph is explicitly labeled as a view of the test setup; another documents running the tube at a Cambridge event in 2001.

Harrison is frank about how far the apparatus was being pushed. He describes electrical components running hot, a worrying smell, considerable power draw, and the difficulty of photographing an intense beam. The site begins with warnings about high voltages and laser hazards. These are historical observations, not instructions that readers should repeat; such equipment can cause severe injury.

The story is appealing because it records uncertainty. The author had to identify equipment, ask other enthusiasts for information, find out why the first attempts produced no visible output, and document the differences between an encouraging flash and a functioning system. There are named acknowledgments to people who helped with technical background.

This is a kind of maker history that tends to vanish when a project is compressed into a triumphant highlight reel. The reader sees the scavenged parts and the unsuccessful attempts alongside the eventual result.

The original page is also full of old-web flourishes, from enormous image files to jokes about disrupting the space-time continuum. Humor does not make the experiment safe, but it does make its author recognizably human.

Explore the 2001-era account and its photographs.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.