This is exactly how the Helium-Neon laser came about. At the time there were published articles on how infeasible a gas based laser was to create. The researc

This is exactly how the Helium-Neon laser came about. At the time there were published articles on how infeasible a gas based laser was to create. The researcher who came up with them didn't know about the papers and hadn't done a full literature search. He just plugged away. Now they're widely used and adopted for most everything.