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
The article describes fundamental and application results obtained in the Department of Quantum Electronics of the Institute of Radio-Engineering and Electronics (IRE) of Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague. The early success in detection of the Doppler effect of radiation reflected from the first satellite orbiting the Earth - Sputnik (1957) was in the Department followed by systematic work in the area of ammonia masers, both 14NH3 and 15NH3 (1963-72). Short information is given on the first graduate courses in quantum electronics (1963-64) organized by the Department. Department's program of laser development and applications is discussed in details. The results of four key research projects are reported in the article, i.e., (a) ruby laser and its application in ophthalmology (including the first laser surgery of retina carried out in our laboratory), (b) carbon dioxide IR lasers, (c) UV-Vis gas lasers (blue He-Cd laser, near-ultraviolet nitrogen laser), and (d) tunable dye lasers. Unfortunately, the politically motivated dissolution of the Department in early seventies ended all the promising programs., Jan Blabla, Viktor Trkal., Obsahuje bibliografii, and V anglickém názvu uvedeno chybně Quatum - správně = Quantum