On Mar 9, 6:33 pm, Chuck wrote:

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 15:07:26 -0700 (PDT), K7ITM wrote:
Note that, as far as I've been able to determine, Michelson did not
have a coherent light source to shine into his interferometer, but
still he saw interference patterns. Perhaps he had invented lasers

It is said he used sodium vapor gas light (~589 nm). Coherent enough.
Chuck

Just a slight addition here. Before lasers, the way to get a
coherent light source was to bottle-up a high-intensity,
monochromatic source, such as the aforementioned sodium-
vapor light, in a reflective cavity with a very small pinhole in
its side. As the photons dribble out through the pinhole, they
are forced into a somewhat phase-coherent wave train. This
source was used in optical processors for synthetic-aperture
imagery back in the 50's.... Jim, K7JEB