Life-Sized Holograms

Reported May 2006

AUSTIN, Texas (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Once just a sticker collector's novelty, holograms are taking on a whole new dimension. These new digital 3-D hologram images may be the key to inventing new cars, designing buildings, and mapping entire cities!

Showing perfect views of every dashboard, every hallway, and every city street, holograms can now be used by police, city planners and car makers.

"The hologram is a more direct way to get exactly what is in the design visualized prior to committing to build the car itself," Michael Klug, founder of Zebra Imaging in Austin, Texas, tells Ivanhoe.

He says that pre-production saves car makers time and money, savings that trickle down to you. "There's no question it can save the car companies and the consumers money, and it's not just money straightaway. It's also time, which is money as we know."

To make the hologram, computer scientists send image data to a computer, which generates thousands, sometimes millions, of different views of the object. The image is then downloaded and burned onto a piece of plastic. After processing, it's laminated, and light reveals some of the most accurate 3-D images ever seen.

Doctors can also use the images to see inside the body. And engineers say wait until the holograms start to move!

"That's kind of the ultimate goal -- what we call the holy grail is to be able to make a moving holographic image that you an update and interact with in real time," Klug says, allowing designers to see the image and make changes to it with their own hands.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Zebra Imaging, Inc.
9801 Metric Blvd, Suite 200
Austin, TX 78758-5455
(512) 251-5100
information@zebraimaging.com
http://www.zebraimaging.com/html/automotive.html

For more on optical effects and technology:

Optical Society of America
2010 Massachusetts Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20036.1023
(202) 223-8130
info@osa.org
http://osa.org

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