Holography

A man by the name of Dennis Gabes invented the theory of holography in 1947. He stumbled upon this theory while working on improving the electron microscope. He received a noble prize in physics for this discovery in 1971, and from then on holography has been refined and advanced. The Thompson-Houston Company filed the patent for this technology in 1947, but really was unable to do anything with it until the laser was invented in 1960. Since then Holography has been used for many different applications. You used to see holograms on packages for marketing or on toys just for fun, but now research is being done to use holograms for security measures and other applications.

Holograms are 3-D images that are recreated or duplicated and put on some type of background or object. The most common type of hologram seen today is the holograms of things in crystals.  These are usually found in a store, or mall and are very fascinating.  Many people wonder how they get the 3-D image in the middle of the crystal or glass.  Most do not realize that this is a form of holography.  That's why when you first see one of these items they seem fascinating and a hard feet to produce when they really aren't.

A rainbow transmission hologram can be commonly seen on credit cards and product packages for security measures. These holograms use white light to illuminate the 3-D image on the package or card. Before this type of hologram was created a laser was used to illuminate the image on the hologram. Obviously the discovery of rainbow holograms made them easier to use for practical everyday uses. Scientists are working everyday to make advances in the holography field because it’s such a promising field for advancements. Their main goal is to make it affordable for low budget and everyday use.

The process of making a hologram seems pretty complicated to me. It involves the beams of light, how far apart they are, and the sin of the angles of the light. Holography has been called lens less photography and I guess that's because it obviously doesn't use a lens. Simple holograms are made by superimposing two plane waves that are from the same wave source. I have no idea how this is done and don't think I would ever understand how to do it myself.

Holography seems to be an area that will always be advancing since there is so much that can be done with it. Holographs can be used for everything from data storage to reading DVDs today. Scientists keep coming up with new applications for holographic technology. The mass produced holographs can be seen on products to prove that they are the original product and not an imitation. More expensive holograms are used for storing data, these allow great amounts of data to be stored in a smaller storage device. Cost for this type of data storage may potentially be cheaper but it doesn't have the same storage quality as the type currently used.

  

Most people overlook the tiny holograms that are used for security, but these are very important.  They can be seen on everything from cell phone batteries to packages from companies.  These holograms are very hard to counterfeit and help to protect the customer from false products.  Many techniques like this are being used on currency to protect from counterfeit also.  Although to actually put a hologram on a form of currency would be too costly so other developments like holography are being used.  The new $5 bill for instance has an almost 3-D looking purple "5" on the back to protect from counterfeit.

There is however some limitations to holography and what can be done with it.  A complicated limitation is that the hologram can only be the same size as the original object.  So not everything can be made into a hologram depending on the size of equipment you have.  Also holograms are not easily copied (that’s why they’re used for security).  To make a copy of a hologram is a strenuous process.  Furthermore holograms do not reproduce the object in the same colors as it was.  The color of the hologram depends on the laser used to make it.

I myself feel that holography is a cool technology, but I do not fully understand it.  I would think that people in marketing would want to use it more for designs of packaging for products.  I thought that holograms were only used to make things look cool but apparently not.  Whenever I would see them on my cell phone battery, or on packages I ordered online I thought they were just there to make the package look good.  I had no idea that they were actually used for security purposes.  I think that this technology is something worth researching further and possibly seeing what else we could apply it to.