A laser pulse shape measuring system to measure the pulse shape of pulses generated by a pulsed laser. Each pulse includes a pulse width and a peak wavelength. The system includes: a beam splitter coupled to the laser to separate each of the pulses into a test pulse and a probe pulse; a pulse width compression means coupled to the beam splitter to compress the pulse width of each probe pulse; a controllable delay means to control a time offset between each test pulse and a corresponding probe pulse; a nonlinear optical medium arranged such that the test beam path and the probe beam path intersect within it to generate wavelength converted pulses corresponding to intersecting pairs of pulses; a detector coupled to the nonlinear optical medium to detect the pulse energies of the wavelength converted pulses; and a processor to determine the pulse shape of the laser pulses.