Laser and turbulence: how our atmospheric propagation researches started and where they arrived.

An overview is made of our long lasting researches on laser propagation through the atmospheric turbulence, first to find the turbulence effects on systems, then to utilise laser deterioration to derive information on the different turbulence models and corresponding parameters. Some of our main subjects and results were: a limiting diameter for optical systems in the atmosphere (first in the literature, 1963), saturation of the structure function of the phase due to turbulence outer scale, turbulence scale anisotropy measurements, Hartman test to measure wavefronts, thin beam propagation and methods to measure inner scale and outer scale based on the correlation of wandering on thin beams. A method to measure the inner scale resulted almost independent of the turbulence model.