Australian Holographics was a laboratory based in Adelaide, South Australia. It was established in 1989 with the specific objective to produce high quality large format holograms. After two years of research and development, the company began commercial operations in 1991. The laboratory eventually shut down in 1998.
Situated on of rural farm land from Adelaide, the lab's facilities included a 5×6 meters vibration isolation table in a studio with air-lock loading doors, large enough to drive a car onto the main table. The main laser was a CW (continuous wave), 6W argon laser built by Coherent Scientific. The company also used a 3 joule ruby pulse laser, built in collaboration with Professor Jesper Munch of the School of Chemistry and Physics at Adelaide University.
The company mainly specialized in the production of the large format white-light-viewable rainbow hologram, a type of holography originally invented in 1968 by Dr. Stephen Benton of MIT. While all rainbow holograms are white-light-viewable, the most commonly known application of the technique has been applied to reflective substrates like PVC (polyvinyl chloride) and PET (polyethylene terephthalate). It was also used on credit cards and as an anti-counterfeiting application in product labelling. Australian Holographics applied the principle for transmission rather than reflective viewing conditions. In 1992, Australian Holographics produced a 2×1 metre rainbow transmission hologram of a Mitsubishi station wagon car, which was shown at Holographics International '92 conference in London.
Australian Holographics was particularly notable for the fact that it had signed the first ever commercial joint venture with the South Australian Museum of Natural History, giving the company access to the museum's collection of exhibits.
Creating a large format studio
The AH project necessitated building a large climate-controlled studio that incorporated a 6×5 metre, 25-ton optical table. The system had to allow for both the creation of large-depth scenes for mastering, in addition to affording the space required for the effective production of ultra-large format rainbow transmission and reflection hologram copies. A heavy sand-filled cavity steel construction was used for the table. The suspension system was constructed around nine Firestone air bags connected to a standard pneumatic set-up with needle-valves, ballast tank and compressor. Overhead towers were designed to carry large transfer mirrors at heights of over three meters above the table. These towers were constructed from hollow steel tubes filled with sand. Over the years, lifting systems for the large glass film holders evolved from hand operated, to mechanical and finally to pneumatic. Using this platform, it is possible to hold flat a 2×1 meter piece of film and maintain its stability, and that of the related optics, beneath the 5,000th of a millimeter tolerance for the 4–8 second exposure.
Imaging techniques in large format continuous wave holography
The emphasis on stability in the CW (continuous wave) mastering process had a surprisingly beneficial aspect: it allowed for the utilization of unstable curtained areas to effectively render unwanted elements invisible in the field of vision. This trick is still unique to CW and is sorely missed during pulse holography mastering, where the problem is that often too many things are visible, and there are limited available methods to conceal them. Thus, if a large object is required to appear as if it were floating in space, CW mastering, rather than pulsed, provided the means to easily achieve this illusion. Many important elements involved in producing high quality large format holograms rested not so much with the traditional concerns of holography, but rather with aesthetic concerns that relate to table layout, and lighting techniques that endeavor to feature the subject without visual distractions and to control glare and reflections that lead to non-linear noise.
