¹ Light is oh so beautiful
and colorful to boot
When it is computing
It shows itself astute

² For half-a-century maybe more
They’ve tried to capture it
But it’s shown itself real slippery
Evading clever wit

³ Until a basic process found
In a plane old physics text
It pictured interference
Which for others just perplexed

⁴ Four conditions it did show
Of two coherent input beams
Which made 4 different pictures
When combining them in teams

⁵ Two showed single beams,
Looked nearly both the same
Both made “Constructive Interference”
With the last “Destructive” came

⁶ On a simple piece of cardboard
With a square hole in it
By blinking inputs on and off
It output Boolean Logic

⁷ By positioning the output hole
At a strategic spot
Within the laser image
Light computing got its start

⁸ That’s the way computers work
At least the digital kind
So Hait ran to the government
For a patent he could find.

⁹ It issued back in ‘92 *
His first one made him proud
He’s finally an inventor in
An official elite crowd

¹⁰ Then over time he then did have
600 maybe more
47 made it to the patent office
Of these ones he had in store

¹¹ He laid a fine foundation
Computing with photons
No more need to wrestle with
Sluggish electrons

¹² ‘cause light is really fast you see
It goes in femtoseconds
A million times much faster
Thus the market surely beckons

¹³ The problem is, it is too fast
Makes a billion dollar market grab
‘cause no one wants a computer
That’s slower than his neighbor has.

¹⁴ The holograms of which they’re made
From aluminum and glass
With a little plastic thrown right in
Just to make them really fast

¹⁵ Of course the old equipment
Holograms it cannot beat
‘cause they just make electronics
So they're now all obsolete

¹⁶ And that’s a lot of money
That folks have on the line
So they may resort to anything
To keep their investments from decline

¹⁷ The problem was it’s worth too much
Caused greed to jump right in
Competition infiltrated
Made him take it on the chin

¹⁸ So for now it’s been stepped on
Crushed underneath their boot
But time will come when it wakes up
‘cause its physics at its root.

¹⁹ You can’t evade the natural laws
They always work the same
It just takes someone smart enough
To put it together again.

²⁰ But they can’t hook them together
There’s a secret hidden there
Without a change in thinking
And that’s sure very rare

²¹ Most think it is impossible
Inside photons they must see
They need pseudorandom thinking
To junk their uncertainty

²² So it is a hot adventure
To see if they can bring
Light computing to the market
So computers then will sing.

²³ If they’re going to do it
Or their competition maybe
It’s still a hot adventure
We’ll just have to wait and see

Exciting isn't it!