A Wild Tale of Meyer-Schwickerath

Gerhard Meyer-Schwickerath was a German ophthalmologist.

In 1949, he used light coagulation to operate on a human eye. How did he do this? He placed a telescope on the roof of the surgery building. The telescope focused sunlight, and the focused light that came out of the telescope was then redirected using a series of mirrors into the operating room and into the eye of a human patient!

Nowadays, we do not rely on sunlight for the generation of light to use for laser procedures. But without Meyer-Schwickerath, lasering eyes might never have come to pass.