After the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, there was a sense that 2022 would see a bounce back for economic activity and the start of a ‘new-normal’. And sure enough, the holography industry did witness something of a resurgence in new product launches for security, display and optical elements.
Other good news was to be found in the announcement that the Hologram Image Register (HIR) had passed the staggering figure of 10,000 registrations and that companies in our industry were fully embracing the need to implement sustainability strategies.
As the year progressed, however, the stuttering restart of the travel industry, the war in Ukraine, energy price inflation and general lack of consumer confidence made it clear that a new-normal was still some ways off. As always, holography and holographers found ways to buck the trend and embrace new opportunities in virtual reality, automotive head-up displays and what the wider press was calling ‘holo- presence’.
But there can be no doubt that 2022 has been a tough year for many in the diffractive optics industry and the sooner we get in to 2023, the better!
IDEMIA Unveils LASINK™ Helios. IDEMIA kicked off the year with the launch of a new security feature, based on optically variable elements, that combines colour personalisation and DOVID technologies to secure secondary portraits. LumaChrome Holographic. Canada-based Nanotech Security Corporation added a holographic version to its range of labelling solutions for brand protection.
HIR Hits 10,000 Registrations. Established in 1993, the Hologram Image Register (HIR) was one of the first projects undertaken by the International Hologram Manufacturers Association and, in this month, passed the incredible figure of 10,000 registrations. KURZ Moves on With KINEGRAM DYNAMIC®. The introduction of KINEGRAM DYNAMIC technology is the next building block in KURZ's modular approach to banknote protection. KINEGRAM DYNAMIC consists of micro-lenses that are arranged in a free- form array and the shape and size of the lens surface can be individually adapted to the customer’s requirements.
KURZ Continues to Make Progress on Sustainability. LEONHARD KURZ, originator and manufacturer of security DOVIDs, released its 2021 sustainability report, its first since joining the UN Global Compact Network last year. Holographyx Launches Patented Holo-Blister. Holographyx announced that it had recently been granted US Patent # 11,052,020 B2 for its Holo-Blister® product, along with European Patent # EP 3532005 for the development of a cost-effective method to apply holograms to the back of blister packs using conventional heat-seal blister packaging equipment.
Meta Continues on Acquisitions Trail. Meta Materials Inc acquired Plasma App Ltd (UK), the developer of PLASMAfusion™, after its successful acquisition of Nanotech Security Corp in October 2021. Increasing the Size of Displays with Stackable ‘Holobricks’. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Disney Research have developed a holobrick proof-of-concept, which can tile holograms together to form a large seamless 3D image.
IQ Structures Extends Range of Interactive Features for Banknotes. IQ Structures announced the extension of its range of achromatic features to include Tilt and Move, White ID, Magnifysense and Keyhole. Hologram Doctors Visited Space Station. NASA disclosed that in October 2021, flight surgeon Dr Josef Schmid, and other team members, became the first humans ‘holoported’ from Earth to the International Space Station.
Queen Misses Her Own Party – But Sends a Hologram. Queen Elizabeth II was unable to attend her own Golden Jubilee celebrations, due to ill health. Instead, a heightened reality projection (dubbed by the media as a ‘hologram’) was projected onto a window of the Gold State Coach. VividQ Showcases Optical Engine for Holographic Display in AR Headsets. VividQ announced the launch of its latest Alpha Optical Engine Demonstrator at the SID Display Week Conference in San Jose, California.
Hueck Folien Launches TRILUMIC® in Thread Format. The UV-printable TRILUMIC® holographic stripe first entered the banknote printing market three years ago. In July, owners of the technology, Hueck Folien, extended it to include a thread format. Time-Multiplexed Neural Holography. A talk given by a team of researchers from Stanford Computational Imaging (SCI) Lab at SIGGRAPH 2022, reported on potential improvements to near-eye holographic displays.
Lumenco Launches Equity Crowdfunding Campaign. Colorado-based Lumenco Inc, a technology company specialising in micro-optics and anti-counterfeiting technologies, launched an equity crowdfunding campaign. MIT Goes Back to Lippmann for Structural Colour Materials. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced that they had created a new method of producing imagery with a range of colour-changing properties, which they say combines 21st-century holographic technology with Lippmann photography.
Holography – 75 Years and Going Strong. HN celebrated the 75th anniversary of the invention of holography, as a concept, as it was in 1947 that Dennis Gabor filed patent BTH (GB685286) on the improvement of electron microscopes. Hologram Used to Authenticate Football Memorabilia. Norwich City Football Club announced that all items sold through the club’s official auction page would have a security hologram added to the item as well as a certificate of authenticity.
Incline Acquires NovaVision. Incline Equity Partners, a Pittsburgh-based private equity firm, announced that it had made an investment in NovaVision, a manufacturer of consumable security and authentication products. OpSec’s New Holographic Foil for Security Printers. Authentication and brand protection specialist OpSec Security launched OpSec® Lazafoil™ as part of its newly released OpSec Agile™ range.
Pepper and Denisyuk – Side by Side. A research group from Kwangwoon University Seoul, South Korea reported that it is using Denisyuk holography, alongside a Pepper’s ghost, to create a bewildering optical illusion. Stensborg Launches Desktop R2P NanoImprinter. The new version of the roller-based prototyping tool provides customers with an improved optical engine, greater ability to explore new UV-curing resins, and overall better control of the imprinting process.
Machine-Readable Holograms from IQ Structures. IQ Structures, part of the IQS Group, introduced holograms that can be authenticated automatically using a normal light and a mobile phone app. Setsuko Ishii Featured in Optica Community Campaign. The latest Optica Community story celebrated Tokyo artist Setsuko Ishii who combined her dual passions for physics and painting to become a prolific hologram artist.
