In 1947,
Dennis Gabor discovered the art of capturing and reconstructing wave fronts of
light at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. By reading the light waves in both intensity
and frequency, Dr. Gabor was able to record them by imprinting interference
patterns of light on a photosensitive surface.
The key is to key the light waves “cohesive” over distances to remain
“in phase”. He discovered that in order
to reconstruct a 3D image, he would need very cohesive light. His idea was to have light whose waves
traveled at one frequency. This did not
exist in 1947.
In 1960,
Dr. Theodore Maiman invented the laser, an acronym standing for Light
Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. This laser generated a beam of light that was
totally coherent since it was all one wavelength. Later, in 1965, Emmett Leith and Juris
Upatnieks used the laser in a modification of Gabor’s original holographic
technique to produce the first completely successful three-dimensional
image. They used a prism to create two
beams from one laser. To reconstruct the
image, a second laser is directed at the hologram from the same position.
My first
memory of seeing a hologram was at the Haunted House at Disney World in
1973. I think it was a hologram. It was 3D inside a glass globe. Now I’m not sure if it was. Does anyone know if it was/is a hologram?
No comments:
Post a Comment