Sorokin and Lankard first observed the stimulated emission from an organic dye in 1966. A chloro-aluminum phthalocyanin solution in ethanol was pulsed with a ruby laser, generating stimulated emission centered at 0.755 mm with a spectral half width of 5 cm^-1. Through the use of several dyes, it is possible to tune the laser output over the entire spectrum into the near UV at one end and the IR at the other end.  In the past, dye lasers were most frequently involved in many applications such as laser atomic spectrometry. At the time they were the only tunable lasers available, however the significance of dye lasers is currently threatened by the growing development of other tunable light sources such as solid-state and semiconductor lasers.