Collectible Holograms

Paul Kline

I see Frank has added a few pages about collecting holograms. My first encounter with a hologram was in 1967 when World Book Encyclopedia published one in their Science Year Book. The Science Year Books were a separate subscription from the regular Year Book and not so many people got them. This was a 3 x 3.5 inch transmission hologram of a set of chess pieces, and included a matching red acetate filter. You were supposed to make a cut across the page, fold the filter over the hologram, and look through them at a pinhole light source. Probably most people did what I did at the time and cut the entire page from the book :-( Through being on the alert at used book sales/stores I have obtained several copies of the 1967 Science Year Book intact. The holograms have held up pretty well though the acetates have bled red onto the neighboring pages. The hologram is accompanied by a very nice article by Gary D. Cochran and Robert D. Buzzard of the Conductron Corporation who made the master copy using a 50mw helium-neon laser in a split-beam setup on a 9-ton granite slab with a 30-second exposure. These are not very expensive (unless you have to buy the whole set to get it) and as they are arguably the first mass-produced hologram of any kind should be very collectible.