The 1964 Physics Nobel Prize including lectures by Townes, Basov and Prokhorov
NASA "What is a Laser" for children
Detailed information on how lasers work (high school level)
LaserFest - A 2010 celebration for the Year of the Laser
Bromberg, Joan Lisa. The Laser in America, 1950–1970. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991.
Hecht, Jeff. Beam: The Race to Make the Laser. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Hecht, Jeff. Laser Pioneers. Boston: Academic Press, 1992.
Taylor, Nick. Laser: The Inventor, the Nobel Laureate, and the Thirty Year Patent War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
Townes, Charles H. How the Laser Happened: Adventures of a Scientist. New York: Oxford, 1999.
Maiman, Theodore H. The Laser Odyssey. Blaine, WA: Laser Press, 2000.
Bertolotti, Mario. The History of the Laser, trans. Bollati Boringhieri. Philadelphia: Institute of Physics, 2005.
Forman, Paul. "Inventing the Maser in Postwar America," Osiris, 2nd ser:7 (1992), pp. 105-134.
Myers, Robert A., and Richard W. Dixon. "Who Invented the Laser: An Analysis of Early Patents," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 34 (2003), pp. 115-149.
Seidel, Robert W. "From Glow to Flow: A History of Military Laser Research and Development," Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 18 (1987), pp. 111-147.
Oral History: Charles Townes (1987)
Oral History: N. G. Basov (Russian Nobelist)
Oral History: Irnee d'Haenens (Maiman's laser)
Oral History: W. E. Lamb (quantum theory of lasers)
Oral History: Rolf Landauer (IBM team)
Oral History: Elias Snitzer (neodymium-glass laser)
Oral History: Charles Townes (1984)