The history of lasers at the Institute of Scientific Instruments of the ASCR in Brno (ISI) has begun 1249 days after the worldwide premiere of laser. The first to be put into operation at ISI was the He-Ne laser (16 October 1963). Highest attention was then paid to its further development making possible a large number of its applications. The He-Ne laser was followed by a ruby laser (4 March 1964), He-Cd laser (1970), and Nd:YAG laser (1973). The article presents all achievements concerning lasers at ISI accompanied by historic photos, their applications and routes to production at national companies. Nowadays many of these instruments and techniques are in use and are further being perfected, such as interferometric distance measurements with sub-nanometer resolution, methods of comparison of metrological etalons by femtosecond lasers, utilization of laser light for manipulations with micro-object combined with laser micro-spectroscopy., P. Zemánek, J. Lazar, O. Číp, L. Oprchalová, J. Kršek, D. Vavrouch., and Obsahuje bibliografii