ABSTRACT
There seems to have been no particular reason why holography should have been such a late developer. Although holograms today are invariably made using a laser as the light source, they can – and have been, with some restrictions – made using other light sources. The theoretical principles underlying holography could have been formulated as early as 1816, the year that Auguste Fresnel clothed Thomas Young’s early theory of diffraction and interference with the respectable garment of mathematical rigor. At about the same time Thomas Wedgwood in England and Nice´phore Nie`pce in France were carrying out experiments that eventually resulted in photographic images. In 1856 Scott Archer discovered how to produce a light-sensitive material coated on glass.
