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Physicist creates first true-color holograms ...
...and a way to mass-produce them as well
August 4, 1997
Web posted at: 11:44 p.m. EDT (0344 GMT)From Correspondent Lisa Price
LAKE FOREST, Illinois (CNN) -- Nuclear physicist Tung Jeong is getting so good at what he does, that he fools even the people who work with him.
"When I came into the room," says Ray Ro, talking about an image he saw in Jeong's lab, "I though I saw a reflection of Dr. Jeong. But when he moved away, his image was still there and it totally freaked me out."
The image he saw was a hologram Jeong had made of himself, an image so lifelike that even his students are deceived.
Holograms
1.2M/32 sec. QuickTime movie
"The copy can never be as good as the original," says Jeong, laughing, "but if it is good enough to fool the eye, that's the end of it."
And, he might have added, the beginning of it.
For not only have Jeong and his assistants at Lake Forest College created the world's first true color holograms. They have also figured out how to mass-produce them.
It begins with a table in his lab that actually floats so, as he puts it, "that all my three lasers are isolated from the earth's vibrations."
Jewelers use holograms instead of jewelry
"All our full-color holograms now are made this simply. That is, once this is set up, you just expose, develop, whatever object is there," Jeong said. "You capture it. "
Jeong has captured many images during his thirty years of hologram research. Subjects include everyone from singer Boy George to the past president of the college.
Unlike the artificially colored holograms the public is used to seeing, however, true color holograms have application well beyond the world of art.
"Cartier and some jewelers like to use it to show their most priceless products in common places without armed guards, so the only disappointed person is the thief," says Loren Billings of the Museum Of Holography.
Jeong has frozen pictures of his children taken 20 years ago into kinetic holograms that bring their images to life in remarkable fashion.
True color holograms are being used now to reproduce everything from jewelry to art to expensive cars. And according to Jeong, that will be only the beginning.
Watch these shows on CNN for more sci-tech stories:
CNN Computer Connection | Future Watch | Science & Technology Week
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