New interest has arisen in the wavefront reconstruction process of Gabor. With the aid of the laser, photographic imagery has been produced in which the image is, to all appearances, a three‐dimensional reconstruction of the original, complete with parallax and other visual effects.
Wavefront reconstruction, or holography, is a fascinating photographic process which is a major departure from conventional photography. In this process, discovered in 1947 by D. Gabor of Imperial College, London, the photosensitive device does not directly record an image of the subject; instead, the electromagnetic waves reflected or scattered from the subject are recorded as a standing wave pattern. The resulting photographic record is called a hologram (from the Greek word holos, meaning whole), a name given by Professor Gabor to indicate that the whole, or entirety, of the wave pattern is recorded.
9. H. M. A. El‐Sum, “Reconstructed Wavefront Microscopy”, PhD Thesis, Stanford University, November 1952 (Available from University Microfilm, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan).
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