A theoretical study has been made of the transmission of a monochromatic, well‐collimated beam of radiation normally incident on idealized material containing only two energy levels. The nonlinear partial differential equations governing the variation of population and photon density in space and time have been solved exactly for arbitrary initial conditions under the assumption that spontaneous emission and thermal relaxation from the excited state can be neglected. These conditions are satisfied in practice when the radiation is in the form of a pulse whose duration is short compared with the characteristic times of these relaxation processes. Two cases are considered in detail: (a) when all atoms are in the ground state and the material absorbs; and (b) when there is a population inversion and the material amplifies. In case (a), the radiation, with a characteristic velocity, ``bores'' its way through an optically dense substance emerging delayed in time and leaving the material in a perfectly transparent or saturated state. In case (b), an incoming pulse is amplified and sharpened—to a degree determined by the gain of the medium. In addition to these cases, the dependence of the apparent spontaneous emission lifetime on the size and population distribution of the material is mentioned.