Preparation on launch of holographie.eu

Work on launch of holographie.eu has just begun.

The website wants to publish the results of M.A. thesis Holography as phantasm story - A parallax view, which is temporarily

in work as well.

Within the next three months holographie.eu starts with an introduction to holography and gives a survey about holography's fundamental techniques.

• What is holography?
• How does it work?
• Special features and parapraxises
• What is light?

In progress of the coming year, phantasms are to follow:

• Holography in animated pictures
• touchable holography
• holographic memory
• holographic brain
• holodeck

holographie.eu wants to be a dynamic website, that is frequently updated to the standard of knowledge. That is why it is going to be launched before final completion of the M.A. thesis and why it is going to be expanded gradually.

More info about the final launch of holographie.eu will also be published right here.

Due to an international interest on this blog, holographie.eu will also be published in an english version.

The man who fell to earth

Sci-Fi movie The man who fell to earth (1976) offers one more example of very early use of holography in cinema.

David Bowie as Thomas Jermone Newton is a humanoid extraterrestrial falling down to earth to find water for his dry desert planet. On earth he starts high tech company World Enterprise to build a spaceship bringing him back to his home planet.

His wife on far distant planet receives a video onto an holographic display of her husband.

The man who fell to earth (1976)

This snippet reveals in an unprepossessing way one main feature of holography - the parallax view. While Thomas Jermone Newton is just shown his own back in the commercial he is watching on TV, his wife is able to see his front on her holographic display.

360-degree 3D autostereoscopic display

Recently several devices and technologies have been introduced using a three-dimensional display (3D smartphone,

3D computer display, touchable holography). Actually they are using two-dimensional displays to generate the

illusion of a three-dimensional image. But on this years SIGGRAPH japanese company SONY introduces a 3D display

wrapped in a cylinder that is ten inches tall and has a diameter of five inches. The prototype not just allows to reach

into the display and turn objects, but it also allows to walk around and watch it from all angles.

DarvishP (feat. Megpoid) - Holography (single)

Holography is a japanese anime song by interpreter DarvishP. The track is produced with VOCALOID, which is a technology and application software developed by Yamaha enabling users to synthesize authentic-sounding singing just by typing in lyrics and melody. Sometimes a real human voice is recorded and being used the basis for the synthetic new voice.

Megpoid is the name of one of the voices generated by VOCALOID and is synthesized of the real voice of Megumi Nakaji. She is a seiyū (voice actress) and a singer. For an animated synthetic voice does not have a body, an anime character is created. The mascot of voice Megpoid is GUMI.

GUMI: mascot of voice Megpoid

Holography (cover)

DarvishP (feat. Megpoid) - Holography

This is supposed to be the english translation:

Silence echoes from the voice of, an unknown source that haunts me.

Fading through time, I go back to that day.

My heart is torn between my,

lust for rays of sunshine

Enclosing myself in everlasting despair

Smeared across this canvas painting such beauty to life

Catching dreams as they fly by

All the little things you notice seem to matter most

The feeling of belonging to you

Everything passes me by like the cold wind

Wishing to release the solitude within my heart

A corrupted world with obscure revenue

How can I break free from this boundless nightmare I suffer from

Day by day, limitless nights which go nowhere

Ascertain the meaning of life we have to at all costs

The sands of time, fade away with such tourment

Weakness descends, under my grasp!

Reminiscing such emotions, intwining souless thoughts that

wander through my mind rendering me helpless...

Retaining relentless feelings, with impure thoughts of carnage

Why is it that I, sense a sudden presence of warmth

Smeared across this canvas, painting such beauty to life

Capture dreams with every stroke

All the little things you notice seem to matter most

Reaching towards my every desire

The answer is ...

All I see passes me by like the cold wind

Wishing to release the solitude within my heart

A corrupted world with such tarnished lies

How can I break free from this boundless nightmare I suffer from

Tomorrow will bring hope for the future I seek

All this frustration soon fades away and slowly disapates

Can you see me? By-and-by with no regret

I will one day, walk my own path

Sharp announces 3D smartphone

Japanese company Sharp announces the international release of a smartphone with a 3D display, that also comes with a 3D capable camera, by the end of 2010.

No glasses are needed to see the three-dimensional illusion that is generated by a technology called parallax barrier system, which has been introduced in April this year. This technology is characterized by vertical slits dividing the light emitted by the display and radiating them into to the left and right eye of the observer. The fundamental principle is the same as lately described in Apple patents glass-free holographic 3D display.

The parallax barrier system technology just works on small displays, because it requires a frontal view, which is mostly given on mobile devices.

Apple patents glasses-free holographic 3D display

Mid May the U.S. Patent and Trade Office reveals a new patent application from Apple, original submitted Jan. 14th of 2010. Under the title Three-Dimensional Display System it describes an "angularly responsive reflective surface".

A projector generates an image onto a special screen, which reflects the images into the right and left eye of the observer.

Furthermore the position of an observer is tracked by an advanced camera system / light sensor syncs the projector system to ensuring that the light beam for the left and right images would correctly reach the observer's respective left and right eyes:

"The positions of one or more observers are also tracked in real time so that the images that are being projected to the observers can be continually customized to each observer individually. [...] The real time positional tracking of the observer(s) also enables 3D images having a realistic vertical as well as horizontal parallax."

"In addition, each 3D image can be adjusted according to the observers' individually changing viewing positions, thereby enabling personally customized and individuated 3D images to be viewed in a dynamic and changeable environment. Further, the positional tracking and positionally responsive image adjustment enable synthetization of true holographic viewing experiences."

The patent also describes "unobtrusive 3D virtual desktop" allowing users to "manipulate objects within the desktop by reaching into the virtual display" and "grasping" and "pushing" the objects.

"The manipulation of the virtual objects occurs because the feedback mechanism recognizes observer movements, such as finger movements, at the locations of the virtual objects and reconfigures the display of the virtual objects in response."

The idea of accomplishing multi-touch with projected objects in a 3D space isn't all new. In February entry Hand tracking introduces Johnny Chung Lees similar work.

Star Wars IV: Holo Chess

Entry Futurama: Holo Chess assumes the holo chess game between Fry and Bender as a reference to the holo chess scene in Futureworld. But it seems more likely that it refers to a similar scene in more popular movie Star Wars IV: A new hope from 1977.

Star Wars IV: A new hope (1977)

Played in Futureworld (1976) one year earlier, the chess game in Star Wars IV is recognizable as a holographic one, even it is not mentioned, and does not need no explanation about what it is.

The man who fell to earth

In the same year as Chuck Browning and Tracy Ballard play holo chess in Futureworld, another movie comes to the cinemas using a hologram: The man who fell to earth.

In the Sci-Fi movie from 1976, which is based on same-titled novel by Walter Tevis from 1963 and directed by Nicolas Roeg, David Bowie plays main character Thomas Jerome Newton. Newton is a humanoid alien from outer space falling down to earth to find water for his dried out planet. He founds hi-tech billion company World Enterprise to build a spaceship taking him back home again.

Right in the middle of the movie is a short shot showing his wife on far distant home planet forestalling the idea of holographic television. She holds a holographic screen to watch his husband on earth.

The man who fell to earth (1976)

Therewith The man who fell to earth is also one of the earliest movies, in which holography appears.

The above shown scene does not just show a hologram. Subliminal the scene demonstrates one of the main characteristics of holography, the parallax view. The alien wife can see the front of red-head Newton in the TV commercial, that stays hidden to the observer sitting in front of the TV watching it.

While in Futureworld the chess game is not recognizable as holographic chess and needs later explanation, the holographic display in The man who fell to earth is clearly visible as a hologram, as it is in use.

iPad holography: Aircord Lab - N-3D

Japanese enterprise Aircord Lab introduces three-dimensional display N-3D - an ensemble consisting of an iPad and a pyramid shaped screen. The iPad literally serves as an over head projector separately screening three angles of an image and projecting each of them onto one side of the semi-reflective surface of the pyramid. The observer can peer right through the pyramid, while it reflects the image screened by the iPad above. By each slab of glass reflecting a different rendering, the observer gets the illusion of an three-dimensional image becoming visible to the naked eye. Using the built-in microphone an installed application changes the image in response to sound.

Aircord Lab - N-3D

Futurama: Holo Chess

The following snippet was forgotten to be attached to the previous entry and should not be kept back. Here comes an amusing one taken form Futurama referring to the Futureworld holo chess scene.

Futurama (1999)

Westworld / Futureworld: Holo Chess

In 1973 Sci-Fi movie Westworld comes on-screen - as first movie directing of bestseller author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park). It is about holiday theme park DELOS which promises to give the illusion of spending ones vacation in a real western, medieval or roman world. These three areas are exact replicas of the particular ages. With android actors. Visitors can do whatever they want to without the fear of getting harmed - sexual intercourse and even murder. But one day the robots get sick and start attacking guests.

Westworld (1973)

Ten years after the first viewable three-dimensional hologram being generated, the imagination of a virtual-reality does not include a holographic imitation of the real world. The virtual-reality consists of physical buildings with physical robots, that have to be repaired when shot by one of the visitors.

Westworld (1973)

Three years later comes sequel Futureworld - same year as Logan's Run is out. After the catastrophe caused by robot attacks Westworld is closed and substituted by a futuristic virtual world. News reporter Chuck Browning and TV presenter Tracy Ballard are invited by Head of DELOS Dr. Duffy to report about the reopening. After some investigations they find out Dr. Duffy killing important personalities and substitutes them by self-bred doppelgänger to attain world power.

Only in the second part of Sci-Fi double Westworld/Futureworld holography is given a minor role - as holo chess.

Futureworld (1976)

Holo chess in this scene is not recognizable as a synthetic generated holographic board game. For Dr. Duffy would not have mentioned, spectators wouldn't know. Of cause he is not right. A hologram is not an optical illusion. A hologram is an exact reconstruction of a lightwave pattern reflected by a real object.

Viewing Westworld and Futureworld it seems that for at least one decade holography can not contribute to virtual-reality. Obviously there isn't yet an imagination of how to use application of holography besides three-dimensional images in art.

Here is a snippet taken from Futurama referring to Futureworld.

Logan's Run

For it is mentioned in a recent entry, the opportunity should be taken to introduce Logan's Run from 1976. The science fiction movie is based on the same-titled novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson in 1967 and is an example for an early use of a hologram in a movie.

In the 23rd century people live in a seemingly paradise trapped under a glass dome, not knowing what is outside. Apparently there is no way out. Under drugs and hallucinogen living a life of sexual laxity most people are not interested of gettig out and knowing what is going on in the outside world. Almost everyone believes in a ritual called renewal, sort of a reincarnation. No one is allowed getting older than 30. A lifeclock - a crystalline device, which changes its colour as a person ages - is implanted in the palm of everyones hand. When on a person's 30th birthday the crystal starts to blink and finally gets black, everyone has to visit the Carousle, which promises a reincarnation on a higher plane of consciousness. But in fact they get killed. There's a legend that there is a place outside the glass dome called Sanctuary. But no one really knows. Few people philosophize about Sanctuary in hidden places and try to escape. These called Runners are haunted by Sandmans of which Logan 5 is one. His job is to find Sanctuary - for it exist - and destroy. He contacts a group of Runners. To make his identiy more credible, his lifeclock is set ahead to his 30th birthday. Logan 5 gets to know Jessica 6 who gets him access to a secret Runner's meeting. But instead of executing her, he helps her to escape. Together the find savaged places where Sanctuary is expected. They meet a very old man far beyond the age 30 and they destroy roboter BOX which froze thousands of other Runners. They realize that the age limit of their society is arbitrary to avoid over population within the glass dome. Returning to tell the people what they found out, they get caught by other Sandmans. Logan 5 is getting interrogated. For his testimony that there is just ruins and wilderness where Sanctuary is expected and that BOX froze thousands of Runners contradicts the calculations of the computer that watches all over the glass dome, it stars its automatic self-destruction.

The attached snippet shows the scene of Logan 5's interrogation.

Logan's Run (1976)

During the interrogation Logan 5's brain is separated into six pieces. Each facsimile acts independently of each other and answers individual questions.

This revolutionary screen technique is seen as a forerunner of the movies and TV entertainment of the future.

Actor Michael York (Logan 5) becomes the first film star performing a hologram.

In 1977 Logan's Run is awarded with the Oscar Special Achievement Award for best visual effects.

Fahrenheit 451

As announced in entry about Wild Palms, this one would like to introduce an earlier idea of futuristic TV virtual-reality using the example of dystopian science-fiction movie Fahrenheit 451 from 1966 by director François Truffaut, which is based on same-titled novel by Ray Bradbury from 1953. The title referes to the temperature at which paper catches fire. 451 degrees Fahrenheit is about 233 degrees Celsius.

Guy Montag is a fireman. But unlike an usual fireman, his job is not to fight fire, but to burn books, which are forbidden in the story. He is married to Linda, who is prosperous by consuming meds and TV shows. Montag gets to know young teacher Clarisse and falls in love with her. She is not allowed to teach any longer, because she is a passionate books reader. Montag becomes curious and starts reading books secretly.

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)

Like the snippets taken from Wild Palms, this one also shows a futuristic vision of TV virtual-reality. But with a significant difference. While in Wild Palms a holographic projection right in the living room provides the illusion of being part of the TV show, Fahrenheit 451 contents itself with a set of two-dimensional parlor wall screens, for giving the illusion of having your own family around you.

Fahrenheit 451 is brought to the cinemas three years after Emmett Leith and Yuri Upatnieks generate the first three dimensional image. So the idea of projecting a virtual image right into the air can be assumed as known. But it isn't used in Fahrenheit 451 even it would have been a good opportunity and would have made sense to do. This could of course be because of production reasons, for it could last several months or even years to produce a movie, or for it is just to expensive. Despite it is astonishing that it lasts another ten years until holography finds its way to movie. In 1976 one the first holographic images in a movie is used in Logan's Run. Even it is not used to generate a virtual-reality as it is done in Wild Palms to give the illusion of being part of another reality. It seems that Fahrenheit 451 can be read as an example of phantasms and ideas reaching conscious with a delay. Further questions result from this observation: Why does it last more than ten years until holography conquers phantasm space of movie? And when is it first used to generate a virtual-reality that can be felt, touched and experienced?

Wild Palms

"Is it real or is it Mimecom?

Wild Palms is a six hour US TV mini series from 1993 produced among others by Oliver Stone. This vision of futuristic TV describes an eraly form of CyberTV and is about virtual television, cravings of power of a media tycoon, phantasies of immortality and a dark picture of the near future.

Set in Los Angeles in 2007, Senator Tony Kreutzer among others is founder and head of the Church of Synthiotics, a sect that believes in a religion of New Reality. To these techno shamans there is more than just one reality.

"This religion is based on the postmodern notion that reality is relative and provisional. Recognizing that what we normally think of as 'reality' is to a certain extent an artificial construct, the New Realists take the next step and decide to attempt literally to generate an alternative reality that is more to their liking. In particular Kreutzer and his cronies are heavily involved in researching computer-generated virtual-reality, a technology that [...] will allow the creation of a 'new improved reality controlled by Mimecom and sold straight out of 7-11'"

Building up media empire Wild Palms Network (WPN) and developing new technology Mimecom for holographic television should smooth the way to world domination by brain washing viewers.

Senator Tony Kreutzer presenting Mimecom

TV Channel Three opens the age of holographic television. TV series Church Windows should bring synthetic holograms right into the living rooms.

Recording an episode of Chruch Windows

All what is needed to watch Church Windows and to become part of the illusion of the new TV format is a little adapter that is put on top of the TV set to generate three-dimensional holograms of the actors.

Watching Church Windows

Mimecom is supported by drug Mimezine, which is an empathigen developed by neuropharmacologists affecting a couple of minutes the cerebral cortex and generating the illusion of touch and enabling the interaction with the virtual hologram.

Mimezine

Experiencing the New Realism is possible without any obstructing devices like data helmets or holo spectacles.

Even if there isn't a drug developed yet to experience a holographic generated virtual-reality, but there are technologies yet in progress to make holograms touchable with no other disturbing devices needed.

Wild Palms is produced exactly 30 years afters the development of the laser and the following explosion of interest in holography. One of the entries to come would like to introduce an earlier idea of virtual-reality by showing a scene from 1966 movie Fahrenheit 451.

Laser

The term LASER is an acronym for Light amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation and describes a physical principle of optical amplification; not the device itself, even the term commonly has to serve as a description for the device.

There is a whole bunch of different lasers: gas laser, solid-state laser, dye laser, semiconductor laser, excimer laser, lasers for every visible colour of light, for ultra-viloet and infra-red light, laser for continuos operation and impulse laser (generates short light impulses, like flashlight). Even not each of the lasers is suitable for making holograms, they all have one thing in common: they generate coherent light, with radiation, behaving as going out from one single point. Vice versa the light rays can be concentrated back to one single point.

In holography usually Helium-Neon gas lasers (He-Ne) are used. The are quite cheap and easy to use. Its mechanics should be should be explained here.

He-Ne lasers consist of a glass tube, which is filled with a mixture of Helium and Neon under low pressure. The tube is sealed. On both transparent ends is a mirror attached. One reflecting light 100% and one reflecting light 98%. First the Helium atoms gets stimulated by energy input. They bump into the Neon atoms. Thereby they get transferred into a higher energy state. When falling back into their previous energy state, they set photons free. These photons stimulate surrounding atoms, and so forth. The emerged light begins to move between the two mirrors back and forth. For the two mirrors are fitted exactly many times over the wave length off each other, the amplitudes adds form wave to wave and amplifies. Finally light becomes so bright, that it passes out as coherent light the laser on that side with 98% reflecting mirror.

Fig. Gas laser

Gasentladungsröhre: Glass tube

Spiegel: Mirror

halbdurchlässiger Spiegel: transparent Mirror

Spannungsquelle: voltage source

Laserlichtbündel: bunch of laser light

5th June: 110th birthday of Dennis Gábor

Due to a lot of work on the issue of holography, Dennis Gábor's birthday completely slipped this blog's mind. Even a tad too late, this should not stay unmentioned.

Born 5th June 1900 in Budapest as a son of jewish parents, Dennis Gábor (hung. Gábor Dénes) passes a study of electrical engineering at Budapesti Műszaki és Gazdaságtudományi Egyetem (TUB) in 1920, that he continues from 1921-1924 at Technische Hochschule in Berlin Charlottenburg. Three years later he takes a doctoral degree - thesis: Oszillographieren von Wanderwellen mit dem Kathodenoszillographen. After getting his PhD, Gábor works at Siemens & Halske AG on his invention of high pressure mercury quartz lamp. Because of his jewish roots, in 1933 he emigrates to England, where he gets the british citizenship and works for Thomson-Houston. 1947/1948 he discovers the principle of holography - at that time called wavefront reconstruction. In 1949 he joins the Imperial Collage of Science & Technology in London. First as a reader of Electronics, later as a Professor of Applied Electron Physics, where is stays until his retirement in 1967. He stays connected as a Senior Research Fellow and becomes a Staff Scientist at CBS Laboratories, where he collaborates with his life-long friend Dr. Peter C. Goldmark in new schemes of communication and display.

Since 1958 Gábor spends much time on a new interest of his: the future of our industrial civilization. His conviction "[...] that a serious mismatch has developed between technology and our social institutions and that inventive minds ought to consider social inventions as their first priority [...]" finds its expression in is three books: Inventing the future (1963), Innovations (1970), and The mature society (1972).

In 1971 Dennis Gábor gets honoured with the Nobel Price in Physics for his invention and development of the holographic method.

8th February 1979 he dies in London.

"You can't predict the future, but you can invent it." (Dennis Gábor)

Diffraction

Besides interference is diffraction the second particular property of the wave nature of light.

Francesco Grimaldi reports in one of his books - published two years after his death - about strange rims of shadows. He observes objects standing in the sun not casting sharp defined shadows. Instead he observes gradual transitions from bright to dark.

"Grimaldi benannte dieses Phänomen des Lichts nach dem lateinischen Wort >diffractio<. Newton, der diesen Vorgang später ebenfalls entdeckte, bezeichnete ihn als >inflection<, was ins Deutsche mit >Beugung< übersetzt werden kann. Diese Bezeichnung deutet bereits darauf hin, daß Lichtstrahlen sich offensichtlich nicht nur gradlinig bewegen, sondern an den Rändern von Objekten aus ihrer Richtung abgelenkt und gebeugt werden."

[Grimaldi named this phenomenon of light after Latin word >diffraction<. Newton, who observed this occurrence too, named it >inflection<. This term already indicates, light rays obviously not move in straight lines , but become diverted and bent at the edges of objects.]

Thereby his observation contradicts that time's assumption of a straight-line propagation of light.

(a) (b) (c)

Fig. Light diffraction

Grimaldi's observation can be explained as followed:

Light impinging onto an object's surface - respectively passing an aperture - is expected to behave as in (a). But it does not. An object's edge - respectively an aperture - works as a point source for a series of elementary waves which, because of diffraction, get bent. The smaller the aperture, the greater light diffraction (compare b and c). Occurring wave fronts superimpose, interfere and consolidate, respectively delete each other. As a result gradual transitions occur. Augustin Fresnel formulates:

"[...] jeder Punkt, der von einer Welle getroffen wird, ist Ausgangspunkt einer kugelförmigen Elementarwelle."

[...every point getting hit by a wave, is the origin of a spherical elementary wave."

He succeeds in proofing light diffraction by his experiment of Fresnel zonen plate.

Fig. Fresnel zone plate

With his discovery Fresnel brings final evidence for validity of wave theory of light.