Shifting Perspectives: Holography and the Emergence of Technical Communities

Conceived as a means of improving electron microscopy, holography was revitalized in the early 1960s by engineer-scientists at classified laboratories that promoted the transformation of a would-be discipline and spawned limited artist-scientist collaborations. However, a separate artisanal communit...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Technology and culture 2005-01, Vol.46 (1), p.77-103
Main Author: Johnston, Sean F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Communities
Cultural studies
Culture
Electrical engineering
Electron microscopes
Engineers
General points
History of science and technology
Holography
Innovation
Inventions
Laboratories
Lasers
Light
Microscopy
Optical engineering
Optics
Physical sciences and techniques
Physics
Politics
Radar
Regeneration
Science and technology
Scientific communities
Scientists
Technological change
Technology
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Summary:Conceived as a means of improving electron microscopy, holography was revitalized in the early 1960s by engineer-scientists at classified laboratories that promoted the transformation of a would-be discipline and spawned limited artist-scientist collaborations. However, a separate artisanal community promoted a distinct, countercultural form of holography via a revolutionary technology: the sandbox optical table. Here, Johnston presents a case study that generalizes the concept of research technology and extends the ideas of Langdon Winner by demonstrating how the political dimensions of a technology can be important but evanescent in the growth of technical communities.
ISSN:0040-165X
1097-3729
1097-3729
DOI:10.1353/tech.2005.0020