http://www.hotwired.com/wired/reality.check.html (HotWired Trade Show Demo, 11/1995)You've heard the hype. We asked the experts. Here's the real timetable.
The Future of Holography Almost 50 years after holography was invented by Dennis Gabor, a Hungarian physicist who later won a Nobel Prize for his discovery, holograms can be found inside wallets worldwide. Simple holograms, such as those on credit cards, are created by shining a laser on an object and recording the reflection onto special film. While virtual reality may be grabbing the media's attention, startling advances in holography are promising to bring true-color 3-D images into our homes and hospitals. And you don't need bulky headsets to see them. Wired asked several leading experts to put the future of holography into focus. - David Pescovitz
| Holophone | Holoprinter | Holographic Medical Imaging | Holographic Storage | $1 billion Industry | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stephen A. Benton | 2000 | 2000 | 1998 | 2000 | 2010 |
| Mark Diamond | 2015 | 1999 | 2010 | 2020 | 2001 |
| James Fischbach | 2020 | 1995 | 1996 | 2005 | 1998 |
| Tung Hon Jeong | 2005 | 2005 | 1996 | 2005 | 2005 |
| Emmett Leith | 2050 | 2020 | 2020 | 2015 | 2015 |
| Bottom Line | 2018 | 2004 | 2004 | 2009 | 2006 |
Holophone: Imagine a phone that displays a 3-D image so realistic it's as if the person you called is sitting next to you. Our experts agree that the biggest barrier to such a holophone is the tremendous amount of bandwidth required to transmit real-time 3-D images. Their solution? Fiber optics. Once that hurdle is crossed, Diamond thinks proposed "intelligent" optical materials will operate on both ends of the fiber-optic cable. Such materials will efficiently encode and decode holographic images, he says, eliminating the need for powerful computers. Benton points out that two years ago, the MIT Media Lab sent a hologram through 70 meters of coaxial line, but he also believes the first holophones are likely to employ improved "lenticular imaging," the quasi-holographic technology used on cheesy 3-D postcards.
Holoprinter: Most of our experts predict that a printer capable of producing instant holograms of onscreen images will be available within the next decade. Leith and Benton expect the printer to use liquid crystal displays to expose holographic film to light, a technique already demonstrated at the MIT Media Lab. Diamond notes that companies in Holland and Japan also are working on prototypes. He notes that such a product "already has a built-in market demand based on the huge popularity of 3-D computer software for effects, architecture, CAD/CAM, and scientific visualization." Jeong, however, thinks that without high-speed optical computers, the transfer of data required to print out "high-resolution CAD/ CAM images on these holoprinters would take too much time."
Holographic Medical Imaging: Before physicians operate in the not-so-distant future, will they examine holograms, suspended in mid-air, of patients' organs? Benton and Jeong point out that a system from Voxel, based in Laguna Hills, California, has been used in clinical tests to create holograms from magnetic-resonance imaging and computed tomography scans. But according to Leith, many physicians say they don't need this costly technology because they can get the information they need from flat pictures. However, Diamond believes that holographic medical imaging could quickly increase a med student's acuity to that of a seasoned interpretive radiologist. "You wouldn't have to have 20 years' experience in the field to notice subtleties," he says.
Holographic Storage: Flashes of laser light can read and record computer information throughout the volume of a storage medium instead of solely on the surface. Jeong says that while a photopolymer-based, multigigabyte ROM already has been developed by DuPont, and a terabyte scheme has been tested at Stanford University, the commercialization of holographic storage "must wait until the rest of the optical computer is developed." Benton argues that this technology "promises incredibly high-storage densities with good error protection and cheap media." Leith is less optimistic. He notes the difficulty of rewriting over only part of the information when it is spread throughout the medium. "Does holographic storage really offer advantages?" Leith asks.
$1 billion Industry: While a current estimate puts the holography industry's revenue at US$150 million per year, our experts say that new uses of holograms will drastically expand the market over the next few years. Fischbach, whose company is working with automobile manufacturers on a hologram system to view future car models, says, "If the Big Three include holography in new development, the market will explode." Diamond notes that India and China are "super-aggressively gearing up to bang out millions of linear feet of holograms" for use on birth certificates and voter-registration papers. However, Benton says that it is hard to determine what constitutes the holography industry: "By the time a holographic product becomes successful, it has become part of the 'printing industry' or the 'visualization industry.'"
Mark Diamond
founder, Diamond Images Inc.; creative director and vice president, 3-D Worldwide Holograms Inc.
James Fischbach
president and CEO, American Propylaea Corporation, a commercial holography developer
Tung Hon Jeong
professor of physics and director of the Center for Photonics Studies, Lake Forest College
Emmett Leith
PhD, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of Michigan
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