Mark Megahan
If you were around back then, you probably remember when Holograms hit the scene and became a big fad. Everyone expected them to get a whole lot better real fast. Instead of 3DTV we ended up with security stickers on our credit cards and shiny pieces of foil to amuse toddlers with. The science of holography did indeed progress with the technology. It simply went “underground” and mutated into forms we don’t quite recognize, thanks to computers and digital processing. For those who weren’t around to enjoy it, here are a few of the more noteworthy versions of the fledgling media.
Holograms are everywhere
Holograms were once nothing more than dry and dusty equations in textbooks on optics. Today, everyone has at least one in their wallet, acting as a security device to authenticate their credit cards. Nobody even notices them. They’re also widely in use “for the correction of optical wavefronts passing through distorting media, such as a telescope’s images of outer space through the Earth’s atmosphere) and speckle interferometry.”
The weatherman can’t pull up a moving three dimensional image of the incoming storm on you’re screen yet. The major fad of the late 1970’s went underground as “innovations go on behind the scenes, rather than in the limelight, to develop new applications and innovations.”
They might not be visual holograms but “holographic” elements “can combine optical properties such as reflection, focusing and magnifying, and they have become an important feature of increasingly sophisticated aircraft visual displays, automotive lighting and laser barcode scanners.”
They can “also serve as key components in detection instruments by interacting with chemicals that alter their optical properties.” Those don’t look real cool hanging on your wall, though.
The first suburban shopping malls in America were saturated with an array of holograms displayed in disk-shaped lenses to be worn as a pendant if so desired. They frequently featured pairs of dice, skulls, coins, chess pieces and other small motionless objects. The attention grabber was the way they captured all the three dimensional detail.
Those were as lame and cheesy as the stickers your grand-kids play with today when compared with some of the ones available, even to the general public.
The photopolymer hologram
In some of the more exclusive galleries, one could find the real-deal holograms. Ones made professionally with high quality equipment and meant to be proudly displayed on the walls of your home. Nobody bought them.
Everyone was expecting the technology to get so much better so fast that they weren’t going to get burned. Not like that $100 Texas Instruments TI-30 calculator. It was the must have piece of equipment when released. You can buy one that does the exact same thing today for about $0.99 at the Family Dollar. Holographic images went the way of that pricey calculator.
To make a proper hologram of the vintage version takes a solid laser and some really expensive optical equipment. Nowadays, it’s done with digital processing. One of the most noteworthy specimens featured an antique microscope as it’s subject. The thing that makes it so special is the way it underscores the freaky principles of quantum physics.
While the image was illuminated from a point generally above the eyepiece, the laser wasn’t shining straight down the barrel. Instead it’s offset to the side, as would anyone looking at it sitting on a table. Thanks to the unbreakable laws of physics, one can tilt the image and look through the eyepiece and clearly see an insect under the microscope. Holograms retain complete information about the object. It’s all there, whether you can see it or not.
As lasers were gradually replaced with versions made using white light and methods easier to mass produce, the tried and true holograms of the seventies and eighties faded into obscurity.
It “lost some of its luster for public audiences as well as for professional scientists and engineers. But the technology still makes an impact today, although not with the same punch it had” half a century ago.
