i went to college in the 1980's. at that time there were no such thing as total reflective mirrors on both sides of
all laser cavities. one side it has total reflective (or to be more precised high reflecive since even aluminum mirrors allows some forms of radiation to pass) and on the other it has a mirror that allows some of the light to pass through. when you built the lasers in the 1960's how many years did you study lasers.
did you know that they have even taught chimps to assemble things now. if a few decades they may have them trained to assemble lasers. that will not mean they will understand them, just that they can build them if they are given all the parts. to understand lasers you need to actually study them, as in go to school to see how they work, operate, and what different kinds of lasers that exist. I did. Did you? your answer says not. there exist lasers with no mirrors at all.
if they dont have mirrors how do they reflect the light. light is reflected by mirrors. most of them use metal mirrors but they still use mirrors and some of them use plain old glass mirrors. grantted these are not the type that you go to walmart to buy, but they are still mirrors and they are not total reflective on both sides of the cavity (except for cavity dump lasers as i pointed out earlier).
you may be able to talk rings around me with talk about oracle programs, but when it comes to lasers, i know what i'm talking about.
if you would like to know more about lasers here is a site that gives an explination that even a junor high school student should be able to follow. anyone that has kids that wants to know about lasers, heres is the place to send them.
http://www.howstuffworks.com/laser.htm da, i see part of the problem. you were talking about solid state lasers which are basically what you described, while most lasers are not. the most common lasers are gas lasers. although with the popularity of key light lasers (laser pointers used for key holders to show your keyhole) the solid state ones are getting more common. the thing is that even the solid state have a kind of mirror on both ends.
