Introductions - Everyone please chime in!

[JohnFP]

I made my first hologram in the early 80's with "The Holography Handbook" by Fred Unterseher, the sandbox holography kit which I purchased from Edmund Scientific and a Heathkit "build it yourself" 1/2mw HeNe laser. I was drawn into holography after seeing my first hologram which was an eagle on a watch crystal I purchased in Italy. I had to learn how to make one. I used film at the time and eventually switched to plates. The "lab" if that's what you can call it was in my father’s basement. It was a 2 x 2 foot plywood sand box on a single inner tube and I had to box up the film and develop it upstairs in the bathroom. I was then given the OK to build the lab in the garage which was separate from the house. I sectioned off the back, painted the walls black, set up a fold down jig which has stops for cutting the plates in pitch black. It also had a 30 gallon plastic jug with a hose and a valve that I would haul water out to and fill up, mounted over my processing area for running water. It was a 4 x 8 foot sand table with a 1/2 piece of steel covering the whole table. After about 1 year I moved to the barn cellar. There I built an 8 foot by 8 foot concrete table on inner tubes. I had to mix the concrete by hand one bag at a time. Still no running water but I designed a water system that I would hook the hose up to and had water were needed. I was using a 5 mw HeNe at that time. I made many holograms in that lab. I also built a pulsed ruby laser from scratch which lased but I was never able to get a hologram with and abandoned the idea. I then moved to a single home and build a 4 x 8 foot concrete table in the cellar which has no exterior entrance. When I moved out I had to bust up the table and carry it out one buck at a time. The funny thing is after about 4 years I ended up moving back into that house and actually buying it and this is where I am today. So, I built another 4 by 8 foot table but made it of sand this time because when I first moved in I did not know I would be there this long, 11 years now.

During the time I was in the garage and barn I searched endlessly for another holographer I could talk to, chat with, and exchange ideas. One of the best resources at the time was the "Holography Marketplace". I bought two I think, the current issue and a back issue. I read that book over and over and over. It was cutting edge technology at the time but never really gave details on exactly how to make what they were reporting on. But one of the most valuable assets of the book was the listing of suppliers and holographers in the back. I tried to call every one of those holographers but mostly they never wanted to talk much as I was very much a newbie. But then I found a company in Maryland, North East Holographics. I called them and told them I lived in Maryland and simply love holography and they chatted with me for some time. I begged if I could come to their lab. I told them I would do anything, take out the trash, clean the bathroom, anything. They finally agreed. So that following weekend I visited them. They had a foyer with a couch and a couple of chairs and a desk with a lot of their hologram displayed on the walls. I was stupefied. I just stared and stared at all those holograms. Literally for hours. They never let me go any further then that room for that visit and the next few. It was about a 2 hour drive each way. Well I went there every weekend and finally they gave me a tour of the Table room. But they did not turn on any white lights. I will never forget the first time I entered that room. It was the mastering room and it had the blue beam, unlike my HeNe's up to that time, bouncing more ways then I could image. The entire table had dark plastic around it so I had to peak in at one little opening. It also had many blockers. It was simply unbelievable. I was now more hooked then before. Well, I kept visiting that place and eventually they let me clean glass, package and ship final products, write some software for new automated configurations. They also taught me to cut steal with an acetylene torch and how to weld, thus I was able to start making them new static bases for their optic mounts. They were made of 3 inch thick steel. Finally after months and months of doing volunteer work they hired me.

During my tenure with them I learned how to care for an Argon Ion Laser, care for a HeCd laser, cut plates, set up a two channel rainbow master holographic table, double expose each slit in silver halide, process with pyro and AmDi bleach for replay in HeCd, clean glass and coat with photo resist, set up H1 to H2 holographic table including aligning and tweaking a fringe locker, shoot in photo resist, process photo resist, atomize silver onto the resist hologram, build a nickel electroforming tank, monitor Ph, temperature and nickel concentration (different for each type of shim), fixture and jig hologram for electroforming, electroform mother and child shims from the silverized resists, design and build and entire large format automated embossing printer (12" wide format), load shim and adjust temperature and pressure to get very nice runs of Mylar embossed hologram. I worked for them for about 3 years there. Then they moved the lab back to New Jersey. Since the drive was so long (about 3 hours each way), I used to go up there on a Monday afternoon and stay right at the lab, sleeping on a sofa or in the chair watching the fringes from the fringe locker, or next to the table, anywhere I passed out from exhaustion until Friday afternoon at which time I would drive back to Baltimore to be with my girlfriend for the weekend. I lost her because of that holographic passion. Some times we would get a very great stable set up and cook holograms for 36 - 48 hours strait, no lie. "When the sun was shining we made hay".

Now recently, I believe about this past October or so I finally was able to get back into holography. I have been exploring and working with DCG. I am using single beam geometry mostly in the 488 wavelength. I use additional transfer mirrors to add lighting to the object. My reference beam is overhead and my objects are upright or laying on their back. I am not interested in making transmission holograms at this time.

My future plans are to try some different techniques in DCG, including but not limited to Vacuum emulsion alterations, Copy transfers of Reflections to imaged plane reflections, emulsion lifting and imaging techniques (reflections) on opaque objects.

Health, Peace and Prosperity to you all!

[BobH]

Wasn't Northeast Holographics run by Jim McNulty? The "Rod Stewart" of holography?! Are they still in business?

[Dinesh]

Vidi, fulgi, veni

[John CK]

I rember seeing the embossed holograms on several issues of national geographic and other places and thinking that they were cool, but I didn’t think it was doable as an amateur endeavor. Getting a copy of the Holography Handbook changed that thinking. (I am looking at the book as I am writing this). Around the same time I also got to visit the Museum of Holography in New York on Mercer Street and got to go there several times. (sadly it has since closed) It was amazing. Large plates, holograms of faces, great depth. I started buying optics from Edmunds Scientific, bought a Hughes nehe and didn’t go any farther. Living in an apartment I didn’t think I had the room or a stable enough environment. Film availibility and price was another problem, so I put it on the backburner for years. In the 90’s I was going to collage and working part time as an electronic tech at the school. I got to know the physic dept. electronic tech and he said that when they have the laser course and when they get to the make a hologram part of the course he would call me. Several semesters latter he called and I took my turn setting up and making my first hologram. COOL . When I became a house owner a few years latter I put together a small table and about the same time got ahold of a large amount of ilford holography film. Around the same time diode lasers were found to be useable for a light source. I mainly make single beam reflection holograms. The biggest problem I have now is I need to do my hologram work at 3 in the morning when the highway I live next to has little car traffic and noise. And the future? I plan to build a larger table so I can do split beam work and I am researching to see if there is an affordable pulse laser option. I am currently looking at dye lasers as a possibly.

[tjohnson]

My name is Todd Johnson. My primary areas of expertise are electronics and physics. I became seriously interested in holography in about 1985 when a friend showed me Fred Unterseher's book. I work at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago, and at that time, we were doing an experiment which was using holographic imaging of bubble chamber tracks, basically pulsed transmission holos of the interior of a 15 foot sphere of liquid hydrogen. Hans Bjelkhagen and Ed Wesley were consulting on the project, and Ed was kind enough to mentor my entrance into the hobby. Ed talked me into building a "beam" table rather than a sand table, which in my small apartment was a real space saver. I attended several of the display holography symposia in Lake Forest, as well as a few of the holographer's parties held by Doris Vila in Chicago. Once I bought a house, I constructed a steel top honeycomb soda can table in about 1991, which I used to produce mostly H1 reflection and transmission holograms as well as a few H2 holos, most having been sold at auction at science fiction conventions. My main laser was a rebuilt 13mW HeNe of unknown parentage. My holography hobby lapsed when Agfa dropped 8E75 emulsion, and other interests pushed holography to the side a bit. I'd love to get back into it, particularly to try using a long coherence diode laser.

[Kris Meerlo]

25 years ago ( I was 14 ) I read a article in a newspaper about holography
I like it so much that I would try to make them at home. I bought a 0.5
mw Hene laser ( I believe it was a laser from a CD video player ).
I didn't know that holography was very sensitive for vibrations and try to make a hologram on a concrete floor without any vibration isolation.
As holofilm I use normal foto negative and a normal camera.
The first ( and the final atempt ) are of course not a hologram at all.
Then in 1997 I tried it again. I made a ' very 'good table and bought a
10 mw Hene laser and shoot the first hologram on Agfa glassplate.
In 1999 I bought a Spectra Physics 125 laser from Walter Spiering.
Nowadays the most holograms I make are singlebeam reflection.
H2 holograms are nice but ( as Collin mentioned ) when you hang the hologram on the wall you must stay in front of the holo to see something.
I find holography a fascinating hobby because you work with chemicals, electronics, optics, and mechanics.

[Dinesh]

I've noticed something interesting in all these fascinating stories. A lot of you either seem to have started early, given up and then returned, or been interested years ago but just started:
Colin :
My interest in holography started 20 years ago but it is only in the last 4 years that I have been making holograms.
edelbrp :
Since then, I hadn't done much at all with holography.. until just reciently
Tony
Later in high school, I made my first holograms....That was it until one night about 16 months ago
wler
However, two decades later I stumbled upon ebay
John CK
so I put it on the backburner for years
Kris Meerl
25 years ago ( I was 14 ) I read a article in a newspaper about holography
I like it so much that I would try to make them at home.....Then in 1997 I tried it again.

I wondered, is this because of more free time? Better availability of materials? The internet (especially this forum )?
Is there really a resurgence of display holography, which would explain why so many of you have come back, or is it an apparent effect due to the reasons I stated (better availability etc)?

I suupose it's unfair to ask such a question without my own background. My original degree was in Theoretical Physics and that was my intended profession. I was fascinated by GUTS and supersymmetry. Salaam offered me a place at a center he ran at Trieste in Italy or he suggested CERN. However Salaam kept telling me not to even try. There were just not many jobs in Physics around and Theoretical Physics was a particularly dead-end profession. Well, when a Nobel Laureate tells you to this, you listen! (Maybe he was just telling me I was awful at Theoretical ). Anyway, I ended up as an electronic engineer playing around with System X, apparently the world's first digital telephone exchange, at a time when CMOS first appeared. One day, at a party, I approached a couple of pretty girls who I was trying to impress. They asked me what i did, I replied "Electronic Engineer", they replied "God, how boring! and walked away! "That's it!", I said "Got to find something more chat-up-able!" Got Fred's book, built a sand table, got a 1mW HeNe, tried to make a hologram and ended up after three weeks with a porcelain bear. So there I was staring at my little red porcelain bear in a dark piece of 4x5 glass thinking, "If this doesn't impress girls, nothing will!"
Anyway, I joined Richmond Holographics (Edwina and Dave) as an intern, ended up with my first holo-job with Applied Holographics, joined Kaveh at Icon, came to the US in 86 and worked on notch filters at NTS, worked on some research stuff at POC, did a stint at ABNH and now here.

[Sergio]

In 1980 I visited a holographic exposition at one museum in São Paulo and get fascinated (most holograms were Denisyuk's), (I remember the first contact on a TV program at age 9 in 1970) in 1982 I found the book "The Holography Handbook" by Fred Unterseher but only in 1986 got a 5mW Brazilian He-Ne laser and got involved in make holograms, first hologram was transmission on a Agfa 10E75 film, then i present the results to a Brazilian holographer Moisés Baunstein and got definitively involved in holography.

In 1990 I build an atelier lab in Sao Paulo and managed larger holograms, most transmissions; and did some visual language research with University post graduate students, the lab was closed but my interest not, in 1995 I start a work with embossed commercial holography that was indeed cool too, in 2001 I was working in a chemical polymer composition for an acrylic glue and appear an opportunity to make a parallel work with polymers, in fact working only with the rest material and some samples donated by the industry I was able to make polymer holograms... together with my friend Martin Müeller we are trying to perfect this stuff even more, we find a way to develop a new material and we go on anyway..

I found again that all the reflection hologram tricks are permanent with films or polymers or anything.. but one thing is true, with Internet the process is more easy and understandable, specially with this forum!


.

[edelbrp]

I wondered, is this because of more free time? Better availability of materials? The internet (especially this forum )?
Is there really a resurgence of display holography, which would explain why so many of you have come back, or is it an apparent effect due to the reasons I stated (better availability etc)?

For me, it was a curiousity to see where things were at these days. I was plesently surprised how much cheaper and easier it is to start out. With only Fred's book to go on, way back when, the barrier to entry was very high (many films didn't exist, sand table construction was difficult, nobody to help me, lasers were expensive, etc.). After countless hours, I got nowhere. Worse, I didn't have a clue why or who to ask for help. I bothered some Kodak tech's at one point, and they really didn't have a clue what I was trying to do. Now, I think I probably had the wrong film (it was scientific high resolution stuff, but probably still not suitable).

Now, with some space in the garage, and willing to spend a little money on a Holokit, I think it's worth giving it another stab! If it works out, there are lots of directions to go (reflection holograms, projection holograms, DCG, etc.).


- Phil

[Tommy]

Eons ago when I was in high school (OK, it was 1988, but it feels
like a long time to me...), I was reading Scientific American, and
the Amateur Scientist column pondered holography.

Then a holography exhibit went through the local science museum,
and I saw some proper holograms. So, I decided holography would be an
interesting thing to do, and proceeded to horde information and hardware.

Meredith Instruments is fun...

So, I made a couple of Denisyuk holograms. Then I did the 4H thing with
them, and showed the whole apparatus to some teachers at school. Then
I tried getting fancier, and my equipment proved lacking. So, I went on
to other things. I kept the holograms of course, and would show them to
people every once in a while.

Even more time passes. The Agfa era ends. Then as a result of a series of
odd events, I ended up with a relatively cheap argon laser, which provided
some new inspiration. (Its unfortunately a sealed tube, and on an
interferometer fails to show any fringes at all at anything above idle.)
So, I dusted off my old HeNe, and started hoarding equipment again. This time,
I have much better resources than when I was in high school (jobs pay better
than paper routes).

Now a days, I have a small table, 30 inches square, made from a piece of
flagstone with threaded rod stuck through it, sitting on some bubble wrap.
Its very solid, but I can only mount optics on the rods, so its not very
flexible. I have a Coherent 315M laser, and have been making transmission
holograms on VRP-M. Pretty much all my reflection holograms have been
disappointing. (But if it was easy, it wouldn't be Cool.)