Charles Townes: I had been working for a long, long time on trying to generate shorter and shorter waves with shorter and shorter wavelengths. So there was a wave which was closer and closer together — the peaks were. Because I had found microwaves very useful in studying molecules. Now, microwaves have a wavelength of about — oh, anywhere from about that long to that long — inches to half a centimeter. But I wanted to get still shorter waves in order to study additional molecules and study new aspects of molecules. So I kept trying to find ways of producing shorter waves. I tried a number of things. And they sort of worked, but none of them really were terribly good. It did enable me to do some new things. I kept looking at this, and we even organized a committee sponsored by the Navy, a committee of scientists and engineers around the country to try to stimulate work and thought in this direction, to try to produce shorter waves.