The 

Hungarian-British physicist Dennis Gabor (in Hungarian: Gábor Dénes)[2][3] was awarded

the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971 "for his invention and development of the holographic method".
[4]
 His work, done in the late 1940s, was built on pioneering work in the field of X-ray microscopy by
other scientists including Mieczysław Wolfke in 1920 and William Lawrence Bragg in 1939.[1] This
discovery was an unexpected result of research into improving electron microscopes at the British
Thomson-Houston Company (BTH) in Rugby, England, and the company filed a patent in December
1947 (patent GB685286). The technique as originally invented is still used in electron microscopy,
where it is known as electron holography, but optical holography did not really advance until the
development of the laser in 1960. The word holography comes from the Greek words ὅλος (holos;
"whole") and γραφή (graphē; "writing" or "drawing").
A hologram is a recording of an interference pattern which can reproduce a 3D light field using
diffraction. The reproduced light field can generate an image which still has the depth, parallax, and
other properties of the original scene.[5] A hologram is a photographic recording of a light field, rather
than an image formed by a lens. The holographic medium, for example the object produced by a
holographic process (which may be referred to as a hologram) is usually unintelligible when viewed
under diffuse ambient light. It is an encoding of the light field as an interference pattern of variations
in the opacity, density, or surface profile of the photographic medium. When suitably lit, the
interference pattern diffracts the light into an accurate reproduction of the original light field, and the
objects that were in it exhibit visual depth cues such as parallax and perspective that change
realistically with the different angles of viewing. That is, the view of the image from different angles
represents the subject viewed from similar angles. In this sense, holograms do not have just the
illusion of depth but are truly three-dimensional images.

Horizontal symmetric text, by Dieter Jung

The development of the laser enabled the first practical optical holograms that recorded 3D objects
to be made in 1962 by Yuri Denisyuk in the Soviet Union[6] and by Emmett Leith and Juris
Upatnieks at the University of Michigan, USA.[7] Early holograms used silver halide photographic
emulsions as the recording medium. They were not very efficient as the produced grating absorbed
much of the incident light. Various methods of converting the variation in transmission to a variation
in refractive index (known as "bleaching") were developed which enabled much more efficient
holograms to be produced.[8][9][10]
Optical holography needs a laser light to record the light field. In its early days, holography required
high-power and expensive lasers, but currently, mass-produced low-cost laser diodes, such as those
found on DVD recorders and used in other common applications, can be used to make holograms
and have made holography much more accessible to low-budget researchers, artists and dedicated
hobbyists. A microscopic level of detail throughout the recorded scene can be reproduced. The 3d
image can, however, be viewed with non-laser light. In common practice, however, major image
quality compromises are made to remove the need for laser illumination to view the hologram, and in
some cases, to make it. Holographic portraiture often resorts to a non-holographic intermediate
imaging procedure, to avoid the dangerous high-powered pulsed lasers which would be needed to
optically "freeze" moving subjects as perfectly as the extremely motion-intolerant holographic
recording process requires. Holograms can now also be entirely computer-generated to show
objects or scenes that never existed. Most holograms produced are of static objects but systems for
displaying changing scenes on a holographic volumetric display are now being developed.[11][12][13]
Holography is distinct from lenticular and other earlier autostereoscopic 3D display technologies,
which can produce superficially similar results but are based on conventional lens imaging. Images
requiring the aid of special glasses or other intermediate optics, stage illusions such as Pepper's
Ghost and other unusual, baffling, or seemingly magical images are often incorrectly called
holograms.
It is also distinct from Specular holography which is a technique for making three-dimensional
images by controlling the motion of specularities on a two-dimensional surface.[14] It works by
reflectively or refractively manipulating bundles of light rays, not by using interference and diffraction.
Holography is also used with many other types of waves.

How it works[edit]

Recording a hologram
Reconstructing a hologram

This is a photograph of a small part of an unbleached transmission hologram viewed through a microscope.
The hologram recorded an images of a toy van and car. It is no more possible to discern the subject of the
hologram from this pattern than it is to identify what music has been recorded by looking at a CD surface. The
holographic information is recorded by the speckle pattern

Holography is a technique that enables a light field (which is generally the result of a light source
scattered off objects) to be recorded and later reconstructed when the original light field is no longer
present, due to the absence of the original objects.[15]:Section 1 Holography can be thought of as
somewhat similar to sound recording, whereby a sound field created by vibrating matter like musical
instruments or vocal cords, is encoded in such a way that it can be reproduced later, without the
presence of the original vibrating matter.[16] However, it is even more similar to Ambisonic sound
recording in which any listening angle of a sound field can be reproduced in the reproduction.

Laser[edit]
In laser holography, the hologram is recorded using a source of laser light, which is very pure in its
color and orderly in its composition. Various setups may be used, and several types of holograms
can be made, but all involve the interaction of light coming from different directions and producing a
microscopic interference pattern which a plate, film, or other medium photographically records.
In one common arrangement, the laser beam is split into two, one known as the object beam and the
other as the reference beam. The object beam is expanded by passing it through a lens and used to
illuminate the subject. The recording medium is located where this light, after being reflected or
scattered by the subject, will strike it. The edges of the medium will ultimately serve as a window
through which the subject is seen, so its location is chosen with that in mind. The reference beam is
expanded and made to shine directly on the medium, where it interacts with the light coming from
the subject to create the desired interference pattern.
Like conventional photography, holography requires an appropriate exposure time to correctly affect
the recording medium. Unlike conventional photography, during the exposure the light source, the
optical elements, the recording medium, and the subject must all remain motionless relative to each
other, to within about a quarter of the wavelength of the light, or the interference pattern will be
blurred and the hologram spoiled. With living subjects and some unstable materials, that is only
possible if a very intense and extremely brief pulse of laser light is used, a hazardous procedure
which is rare and rarely done outside of scientific and industrial laboratory settings. Exposures
lasting several seconds to several minutes, using a much lower-powered continuously operating
laser, are typical.

Apparatus[edit]
A hologram can be made by shining part of the light beam directly into the recording medium, and
the other part onto the object in such a way that some of the scattered light falls onto the recording
medium. A more flexible arrangement for recording a hologram requires the laser beam to be aimed
through a series of elements that change it in different ways. The first element is a beam splitter that
divides the beam into two identical beams, each aimed in different directions:

 One beam (known as the 'illumination' or 'object beam') is spread using lenses and

directed onto the scene using mirrors. Some of the light scattered (reflected) from the
scene then falls onto the recording medium.
 The second beam (known as the 'reference beam') is also spread through the use of
lenses, but is directed so that it does not come in contact with the scene, and instead
travels directly onto the recording medium.
Several different materials can be used as the recording medium. One of the most common is a film
very similar to photographic film (silver halide photographic emulsion), but with a much higher
concentration of light-reactive grains, making it capable of the much higher resolution that holograms
require. A layer of this recording medium (e.g., silver halide) is attached to a transparent substrate,
which is commonly glass, but may also be plastic.