"I was very eager to produce an oscillator for short waves. I was doing science with microwaves, and I would get down to a few millimetres in wavelength, but I wanted to get shorter wavelengths; I wanted to get into the infra-red because I saw there was a lot more to be done there."
Charles H. Townes was an American physicist and Nobel laureate who made foundational contributions to the development of the maser and laser. He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for work in quantum electronics. Townes also played a major role in astrophysics and radio astronomy research.