Holography

Holography is a technique of recording 3-D images by capturing the pattern of light scattering in a way that can reproduce the original appearance of an object from all angles at once. Originally invented and patented (in the United Kingdom) in 1947 using electron microscopes, it first became practical after the development of lasers in 1960, with the first laser-based optical holograms being produced in 1962. Holograms have been used in artwork, in security images embedded in cards and documents, and experimentally as a medium for data storage.

An attribute of a hologram is that each part of a holographic image contains the entire image, though at a degraded quality compared to the original, unlike a photograph which, when cut into pieces, results in each piece only having a part of the image. Thus, if you cut a picture of a person in half, one half might have the person's left eye in it and the other the right eye, while doing the same with a hologram would result in both halves having a recognizable view of both sides of the person's body, just a little fuzzier than the full hologram.

Links

 * Wikipedia article
 * Wikipedia: Holographic data storage
 * International Hologram Manufacturers Association
 * 1970 US patent on a holography technique