A laser turntable (or optical turntable) is a phonograph that plays standard LP records (and other gramophone records) using laser beams as the pickup instead of using a stylus as in conventional turntables. Although these turntables use laser pickups, the same as Compact Disc players, the signal remains in the analog realm and is never digitized.
History
William K. Heine presented a paper "A Laser Scanning Phonograph Record Player" to the 57th Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention in May 1977. The paper details a method developed by Heine that employs a single 2.2 mW helium–neon laser for both tracking a record groove and reproducing the stereo audio of a phonograph in real time. In development since 1972, the working prototype was named the "LASERPHONE", and the methods it used for playback was awarded U.S. Patent 3,992,593 on 16 November 1976. Heine concluded in his paper that he hoped his work would increase interest in using lasers for phonographic playback.
Finial
Four years later in 1981 Robert S. Reis, a graduate student in engineering at...
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