Many years ago, when holograms were first introduced, I distinctly remember going to an art gallery where they sold several framed ones. These were the old holograms (created by lasers and typically green in color) and so it was like a frozen image captured inside a pane of glass. They were incredible. You could turn the glass and see completely new angles, even behind edges. It was magic. I wish I'd bought one or two (they oddly weren't all that expensive). I remember one of the Starship Enterprise was pretty awesome.
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| Pocket watch gears hologram |
Then, credit cards started putting holograms on their silly plastic and some of the specialness disappeared. Well, maybe not. The holograms we see now are very cheaply created. The early ones were carefully sculpted works of art. Sure, they weren't complex (I remember one was just an apple), but they were just like peeking through a green-colored window and seeing something barely on the other side. I remember a video game (one of those big cabinet consoles you found in video game arcades--which were common back then) that used a spinning mirror to make your game character appear on a table in front of you. It was pretty cool, like the "Dragon's Lair" arcade game, but you could stick your hand through the image.
I've often wondered why the concept never moved beyond the initial stages. There are lots of concepts for how to make it work--such as smoke or water droplets and special lenses. I suppose the new "interactive virtual environments" (Pokemon GO) have taken the place of holograms. Yet, I suspect there's a huge market for 3-Dimensional photographs. I'd love to put up a pictures of mountains, where I can walk up to them and move side-to-side and see new angles. Science fiction stories have guessed at technologies like that, so why haven't we created it yet? Come on, inventors! I want a wall in my basement that shows me the now vanished ebony beaches of Hawaii!
- M
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