Caulfield, Soref, and McMahon develop a new form of data storage.
While holography is commonly associated with three dimensional images, some of the most important developments have been in using holograms to store and retrieve information in optical form.
Holographic memory was created by interference patterns between two sources of light, called the reference and signal, with lasers being the most precise. Instead of recording an image of an object, as with normal holograms, a set of data can be capture instead. Binary data in the form of 1s or 0s can be represented by a pattern of light and dark.
Holographic memory is still very much in development, but the pioneering work was done almost forty years ago. In 1970s Henry Caulfield (1873-1966) _ then principal scientist at the Sperry Rand Research Center in the United States _along with electrical engineers Richard Soref and Donald McMahon field the patent for "holographic data storage". In it they proposed holography as a means of recording and playing back information. In principle, a hologram can store as much as four gigabits per cubic millimeter, although practical limitation make that figure lower. In addition to potentially huge capacity, holographic memory promises almost instant retrieval of the whole data set on once.
In 2006 the company InPhase Technologies set a new record for data storage using holographic technicques, with 515 gigabits per square inch. The company has since launched the world's first holographic storage product range.
While holography is commonly associated with three dimensional images, some of the most important developments have been in using holograms to store and retrieve information in optical form.
Holographic memory was created by interference patterns between two sources of light, called the reference and signal, with lasers being the most precise. Instead of recording an image of an object, as with normal holograms, a set of data can be capture instead. Binary data in the form of 1s or 0s can be represented by a pattern of light and dark.
Holographic memory is still very much in development, but the pioneering work was done almost forty years ago. In 1970s Henry Caulfield (1873-1966) _ then principal scientist at the Sperry Rand Research Center in the United States _along with electrical engineers Richard Soref and Donald McMahon field the patent for "holographic data storage". In it they proposed holography as a means of recording and playing back information. In principle, a hologram can store as much as four gigabits per cubic millimeter, although practical limitation make that figure lower. In addition to potentially huge capacity, holographic memory promises almost instant retrieval of the whole data set on once.
In 2006 the company InPhase Technologies set a new record for data storage using holographic technicques, with 515 gigabits per square inch. The company has since launched the world's first holographic storage product range.
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