The Bell & Howell Spectroscope was initially a hologram projector, but was re-purposed by Claudia Donovan into a 3D Imager.
Background[]
The Bell & Howell Company was founded in 1907 in Chicago. Over the years, it manufactured and sold a variety of optical devices, including motion picture cameras and projectors, slide projectors and other devices for the military.
Usage[]
The hologram projector was likely built for entertainment, though Claudia Donovan repurposed it to be able to take digital photos and recreate a three dimensional image from them.
Real World Connections[]
In holography, some of the light scattered from an object or a set of objects falls on the recording medium. A second light beam, known as the reference beam, also illuminates the recording medium, so that interference occurs between the two beams. The resulting light field is an apparently random pattern of varying intensity which is the hologram. It can be shown that if the hologram is illuminated by the original reference beam, a light field is diffracted by the reference beam which is identical to the light field which was scattered by the object or objects. Thus, someone looking into the hologram 'sees' the objects even though it may no longer be present. Though this spectroscope appears to only use one beam.
Appearances[]
- "Burnout"