Gordon Gould Quotes

There was a second problem that was still not a technical problem… the project became classified. I couldn’t work on it after having gone to all that trouble. I was considered a security risk, so I could not get a clearance.

The real technical problems came because people working on the project didn’t really follow my proposal at all, but set out to do other things instead of making a laser.

That attitude does not exist so much today, but in those days there was a very sharp distinction between basic physics and applied physics. Columbia did not deal with applied physics.

Just think, if I had understood my lawyer and if he and I had communicated properly in January 1958, this whole history would have been entirely different.

I would have had my patent long, long ago, and it would have run out long, long ago. I would have made, maybe, $100.000, much less that the patent has brought me now.