The Technological Need for Holographic Data Storage :: Exploratory Essays Research Papers

The Technological Need for Holographic Data Storage Digital technology has become the latest byword in entertainment and computers. Records and analog cassette tapes have been supplanted with Compact Discs, and now VCRs are being challenged by Digital Video Discs. Multimedia applications such as these consume enormous amounts of storage space, and are challenging the limits of today's storage devices. Many solutions are being put forth in an attempt to keep pace with the growth in demand for digital data storage. Some are evolutionary changes in existing media, which can incrementally increase speed and capacity, while others attempt to circumvent the limitations of present media by using new methods, and promise to leapfrog over conventional technology. Holographic data storage is one of these attempts at creating a new type of high density storage device. However, scientists have been trying to develop a holographic storage device for the past 30 years, when the idea was first proposed. There have been few commercial holographic sto rage devices released since then, but recent developments in the field and the inertia behind the search for solutions promise to eventually make holographic storage a commercially viable reality. Holograms have been around for quite a while. Denis Gabor, a British Physicist, pioneered holographic technology in the 1940s (Glanz 736). In his research, he discovered that, "when a beam of coherent light scatters off an object and intersects with another coherent beam, the interference pattern created where the beams cross harbors a three dimensional image of the object . . . . The image will reappear when this 'hologram' is probed with a third beam of coherent light" (Glanz 736). Thus began the field of holography. Scientists first conceived of using Gabor's holograms to store data over thirty years ago. In 1962, IBM instructed Glenn Sincerbox to research using holograms to store data (Glanz 736). The scientists at the time felt, "The novel technology [holograms] promised devices that could pack information 10 times more densely and fetch it 100 times more quickly than could any magnetic disk or tape drive" (Gibbs 128). The idea of using holograms to store digital data has been around for many years, and its promises have long been apparent. Holograms are recorded by intersecting an image bearing laser beam with a reference beam. The intersection of these beams records the image into the medium which is being recorded on, and the image can then be read later by shining a reference beam at the laser, which then "reproduces the original image-bearing wavefront" (Heanue, Bashaw, and Hesselink 749).