While working on improving the resolving power of the electron microscope in 1947, Dennis Gabor asked himself what would happen if the fuzzy image captured by the device were clarified optically in order to obtain all the information about the imaged object. Instead of just the beam of light generated by a stream of electrons, he expanded the concept to include electromagnetic radiation (light) in general. His idea involved splitting the beam of light from the source into two beams, one directed upon the object to be analyzed and the other reflected off a nearby mirror. Both beams of light would initially have the same wavelength (monochromatic) and be in phase (coherent). Upon reflection, the beam from the mirror would remain unchanged, while the beam from the object would contain all the three-dimensional impressions and irregularities imposed on it by the object. When the reflected beams were collected onto a piece of photographic film, they would be generally incoherent and interfere with each other. As the waves cross paths and interfere, they produce standing wave patterns that can be photographed because the patterns are standing still in space. When these waves patterns were captured on film, Gabor reasoned that the resulting interference pattern should contain all the information about the object. He coined the term "hologram" (a combination of Greek words that means the "whole message," or the "complete picture") to represent the unclear, photographed interference pattern.

Using physical reasoning and a mathematical derivation, Gabor determined that if coherent light were shone back through the film to illuminate the interference pattern, the original wave-front would be reconstructed, and the light would transform this unclear interference pattern into a three-dimensional image of the original object. He proceeded to use a mercury lamp that he shined through a pinhole to produce the first, though rather diffuse, holograms. Further developments in holography were stymied until the invention of the laser, a true monochromatic, coherent light source, by Theodore Maiman in 1960.

Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks, graduate students at the University of Michigan, read Gabor's papers on holography and produced the first clear, realistic holograms in 1962. Gabor was one of the first people to pose for a holographic portrait. Because of Gabor's inventive genius, holography has made a positive, practical impact on a wide variety of applications that include high-resolution imaging, information storage and processing, and interactive three-dimensional displays.

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