Holographic Visions: A History of New Science (review)

I vaguely remember a childhood visit to a science museum in Pittsburgh where a hologram of the earth (or was it a coin?) provided the trip's highlight. The 1977 film Star Wars, featuring a holographic message from Princess Leia and holographic pieces on a gameboard, enraptured me. Years later, my first credit card, replete with an embossed hologram to deter counterfeiters, marked a reluctant acceptance of adult responsibilities. As I read Sean Johnston's comprehensive and compelling book, I discovered the origins and understood the historical context for these and many other instances where holography intersected with science, art, and business.

The book's title suggests Johnston's approach to the topic. "Group after group," he says, "was seduced by holography" (p. 2). Beginning with George Gabor's wavefront construction research in the 1940s, multiple communities including scientists, artisans, and artists have exploited and interpreted holography in diverse ways. By investigating these varied perspectives, Johnston ably traces holography from cold war laboratories to its adoption by the 1960s counterculture movement, and from attempts to commercialize it to its place in popular culture. In weaving together this ambitious tale, Johnston also alludes to the challenge facing historians trying to understand contemporary technoscience while striving to reconcile existing viewpoints established by living practitioners and promoters.

Thorough, exhaustive, and occasionally exhausting, Holographic Visions addresses several main themes. In the first part, Johnston explains how scientists built the intellectual foundations for holography in Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States. In each of these places, researchers generated "distinct visions of the field" (p. 13) which later combined to form the more general subject of holography. Considering its complex beginnings, holography's contested origin myths created acrimony in the scientific community. As Johnston reveals, private and public lobbying by George Stroke, a noted electro-optical engineer, preceded Gabor's receipt of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics. Stroke's actions placed Gabor between two "hostile camps," validating some accomplishments and deprecating others (p. 139). Because holography's practitioners wrote much of their field's early history, this tale underscores "the tenacity of insiders' accounts" and the danger of relying only on published accounts and papers (p. 123).

After examining scientists' "frenetic research to extend the technical capabilities of holography" (p. 11), Johnston explores different holographic cultures developed by artists and aesthetes. The story of how the counterculture of the 1960s embraced holography—despite its origins as classified research at places like the University of Michigan's Willow Run Laboratory—is intriguing. Likewise, potential parallels between "artisan holography" and San Francisco's Sidewalk Astronomy movement reveal the diverse activities of amateur scientists (p. 271). While I would have liked more direct explication of the connections between artisan holographers with broader social movements, the ways in which material culture reflected beliefs and identities are captivating and convincing. I especially appreciated the symbolism Johnston detects in holographers' equipment—scientists and engineers favored heavy granite tables (stable, inflexible, and resistant to change) compared with artisans' "malleable and versatile" sand tables (p. 284).

Comparisons Johnston makes between holographers from the orthodox and artisan communities are all the more ironic given the importance of high-tech tools like lasers. They also suggest that historians' general tendency to ascribe antitechnology beliefs to the counterculture movement bears further scrutiny. Pedagogical issues associated with training practitioners offer another useful comparison between the science-based and artisan-based holography communities. The numerous schools and workshops devoted to holography offered "a third form of socialization" (p. 272) while practical publication eschewing complex scientific explanations helped bring holography to a wider public.

The book's last section focuses on attempts to commercialize holography. These (largely unsuccessful) activities coincided with the increasing appearance of holography in pop culture. Johnston acknowledges, for instance, that erotic photographers and pornographers were among the first to exploit—as they did with the World Wide Web— holography's potential for business purposes. He also draws some valuable connections between the public...