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In the Wookieepedia article on blaster technology, lasers - in the context of true electromagnetic beams - are mentioned to be archaic, suggesting they existed in Star Wars military history. The Wookieepedia article on lasers, however, are in the context of being interchangeable terminology with blasters, and so do not refer to true lasers.

What records of true laser weaponry are there?

Legends answer preferred, since the article that contains the references are from Legends.

DavidW
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thegreatjedi
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  • For legends, even the very first timeline book, Into the Void, had SW style laser weapons. Maybe the comics go back further? –  Feb 14 '16 at 18:36
  • FYI, "laser" in Star Wars is generally used to refer to small-ship-class blaster weaponry. A handheld weapon is called a blaster, a Starfighter or freighter-mounted cannon is called a laser, and a capital-ship mounted battery is called a turbolaser. You are correct that true lasers (as well as particle beams) are mentioned as archaic weapons, but I don't know from what period they date. – user45623 Feb 15 '16 at 18:36

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There was a large laser in the first movie.

Death Star 1 firing superlaser

DavidW
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Organic Marble
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  • What makes you think that was a "laser" in the modern sense, as opposed to the Star Wars sense of some kind of plasma beam that moved slower than light? If you look at 2:06 in the video here, you can actually see the beam move outwards at a speed seemingly much slower than light. – Hypnosifl Feb 14 '16 at 17:02
  • Also, I don't think modern Disney canon has explained the superlaser, but the Legends section of the wookieepedia article says it was more like a particle beam than a modern laser: "The superlaser was composed of several exotic matter beams accelerated and amplified by gigantic focusing magnetic lenses and coils, producing a single powerful beam. Unlike turbolasers, it pulled energy from a massive hypermatter core, converting the energy present in hyperspace into highly unstable particles that were tremendously destructive in normal space." – Hypnosifl Feb 14 '16 at 17:14
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    I may have been confused by the part of its name that contained "laser". – Organic Marble Feb 14 '16 at 17:17
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    But the original question specifically mentioned that "laser" in Star Wars is used to refer to things other than coherent light beams: "The Wookiepedia article on lasers, however, are in the context of being interchangeable terminology with blasters, and so do not refer to true lasers." See also the "turbolaser", which fired blasts that clearly move slower than light and had been established in Legends canon to be something different from a true laser (also not the question says 'Legends answer preferred'). – Hypnosifl Feb 14 '16 at 17:22
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    I get you, the Empire technicans that built it and called it a laser, were wrong. – Organic Marble Feb 14 '16 at 17:23
  • They needn't be "wrong" about anything--it's an alien civilization that just coincidentally happens to have a species that looks like humans and a language that sounds like English, they presumably are just defining "laser" to mean something different than what we define it as, just as the "falcon" in "Millennium falcon" must refer to something different than an Earth falcon. – Hypnosifl Feb 14 '16 at 17:25
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    Too bad they didn't call it a petunia. Then this needless confusion between two different weapons that emit beans of light and are called the same thing, could have been avoided. – Organic Marble Feb 14 '16 at 17:27
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    Obviously, when The Force guided the development of the English language on Earth and Galactic Basic in the Star Wars galaxy, it didn't make them identical but made sure to keep them similar enough so that conversations in the Star Wars galaxy would be easily comprehensible to the average English-speaking Earth moviegoer, who is likely to know what a petunia is but probably wouldn't know much about lasers other than that they are deadly, brightly-colored beams that go "pew pew". – Hypnosifl Feb 14 '16 at 18:11
  • So are "parsecs" a unit of distance there? If not, that could solve all kind of problems. – Organic Marble Feb 14 '16 at 18:12
  • Parsec is distance. The reason the G gave for its use in measuring the Kessel Run is that hyperspace travel time is extremely closely related to distance (being that you are travelling in light years, a difference of 0.1 light years can mean a lot), so shorter distances virtually means a shorter journey. Meaning that in hyperspace, distance is equivalent to travel time. – thegreatjedi Feb 14 '16 at 23:25
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    So parsecs are parsecs but lasers are not lasers. The force is strong with this one. – Organic Marble Feb 14 '16 at 23:28
  • My take on Star Wars lasers is that true lasers were once used for warfare, hence its archaic designation (like how the US Navy is field testing experimental lasers off the coast of Iran today), but once plasma blaster bolts became mainstream, the older laser tech is abandoned but the terminology stuck around: layman speak and technical speak can differ. – thegreatjedi Feb 14 '16 at 23:30