Who Invented Holograms?
Holography dates from 1947, when British/Hungarian scientist Dennis Gabor accidentally developed the theory of holography. Gabor intended to increase the power of electron microscopes by using a light beam instead of an electron beam. Instead of achieving his goal, Gabor created the first hologram. Gabor then coined the term hologram from the Greek words holos, meaning whole, and gramma, meaning message. Further development in the field was prevented during the next decade because light sources available at the time were not truly coherent, or having a constant wavelength. This barrier was overcome in 1960 with the invention of the laser. This pure intense light was ideal for making holograms. A laser has one characteristic that makes it different from all other light sources. A laser is coherent. In 1962, Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks, who worked in side-reading radar, realized that holography could be used as a 3-D visual medium. In 1962, they read Gabor’s paper and simply out of
