ABSTRACT
The first broadly tunable laser was the organic dye laser. The dye laser was discovered in 1966 by Sorokin and Lankard [1] and Schäfer et al. [2]. Dye-doped polymer (DDP) gain media for tunable lasers were introduced shortly afterwards by Soffer and McFarland [3] and Peterson and Snavely [4]. However, due to initial difficulties with laser medium optical inhomogeneities and thermal problems, these media were relegated to the archives, with the exception of some sporadic interest (see, e.g., [5]), until the 1990s [6].
