"This is a highly informative and engaging book. Johnston takes his audiences from the intriguing beginnings to the thousand-fold uses of holography today. He explores the environments in which holography developed, and the new experts who evolved with it. A 'must read' for lay audiences and specialists alike!" --Klaus Staubermann, Science & Technology, National Museums Scotland, UK "Holograms offers insightful contextualisation of a science history tracing holography from science workshop to commercial success. Its roller-coaster ride takes you from the beginnings of a new medium to its use as a ubiquitous optical security marker and beyond. Wonderfully written and crammed with factual information, I urge all those interested in understanding the journey of applied optics, or three-dimensional displays, to read this gem. Uniquely insightful offering a mature platform for one of mankind's greatest imaging tools." --Professor Martin Richardson ARPS, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK "Johnston has targeted an important and fascinating topic.

He masterfully interweaves strands of cultural meaning, technical preconditions, theoretical analysis, practical applications and economic ramifications. A must-read for cultural historians and, of course, for historians and sociologists of modern science and technology." --Klaus Hentschel, University of Stuttgart, Germany, and author of Mapping the Spectrum: Techniques of Visual Representation in Research and Teaching (OUP, 2002) "Holography is a truly fascinating optical medium, almost subconsciously embedded in our culture. Now that the field has matured, it is ripe for cultural investigation and Johnson does just that in a detailed, investigative and intelligently written series of observations. His expert view is supported by extensive references and footnotes. This book will extend the cultural horizons of the scholar, the visual enthusiast and the curious cultural onlooker." --Dr. Andrew Pepper, Artist, Fulbright Scholar & Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University, UK "This is an important contribution to a small but growing group of pioneering studies showing how twentieth century technologies drew on much richer and diverse sources of creativity across society than the moated community sometimes connoted by the phrase 'science and technology'.

Showing how a spectrum of products and processes resulted from the interpenetration of diverse communities of physicists, engineers, corporate and countercultural enthusiasts, artists and visionaries, Johnston helps us see the process of inventing and developing the hologram in multiple dimensions." --Robert Bud, Research Keeper, Science Museum, London "[C]omprehensive for common readers and specialists alike." --Optics & Photonics News "Johnston is the hologram's Boswell . Johnston meticulously records its protean adventures among scientists, entrepreneurs and the general public throughout the world." --Times Literary Supplement "Recommended." --CHOICE "Holograms: A Cultural History offers an engaging and highly readable history of the hologram from a totally different point of view. Johnston is an excellent storyteller." --Leonardo Reviews Quarterly.