[time-nuts] Re: The Collapse of Puerto Rico’s Iconic Telescope [April 5th, 2021 New Yorker]

[ew]

During my days at UTC I was among other things responsible for our Industrial Laser Group. We sold some 50 KW CW CO2 lasers! We had the only aero dynamic window that allowed  a vacuum on one side. When not in use you put a pencil through it. Patented.                                                           Bert Kehren In a message dated 3/31/2021 3:17:21 PM Eastern Standard Time, richard at karlquist.com writes: 


On 3/31/2021 11:57 AM, Lux, Jim wrote:

> 
> In some ways it's like high power laser labs. It's not the direct beam 
> you worry about - nobody is going to put their hand in the beam path. 
> It's the stray reflection when something gets bumped and falls across 
> the optical bench and reflects a stray beam at 0.01% power into your eyes.

I did consulting at Coherent Laser Group working on CO2 lasers.
In that lab, actually, many people had the misfortune of accidentally
putting their hand or arm in the invisible beam.  You could see the
scars on their arms.  There were also accidents where the laser
burned the ceiling, etc.  Very scary place to work; fortunately,
I never got injured.  They made lasers up to 1kW optical power out.

Rick N6RK
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