Chicken Little: The Inside Story (A Jungian ... - Inner City Books

The Experiment 113
“The major portion of light, the object beam, will pass directly
through the beam-splitting glass, striking this mirror, which will
deflect the light through this lens to illuminate the object—Ms.
Little—which will go here. Some of the light hitting the stone will
bounce off it onto the film plate, here, thus interfering with the
waves of the reference beam.
“Now, the light waves of the object beam and those making up
the reference beam should travel the same distance from the beam
splitter to the plate. It’s also important that no light from the object
beam should hit the plate directly, and no light from the reference
beam should hit the object. We’ll have to get it just right in order to
record on the emulsion a coherent interference pattern—the visual
information seen as a hologram.”
When all the components were in place, Norman took Brillig’s
stone and rested it in the sand so the glyph side would be illuminated
by the object beam from the laser. Close by it he placed a
holder for the holographic plate. Then he dipped into the trunk and
came up with several packets.
“In here,” he said, “are a dozen glass plates. The emulsion on the
film has an ASA rating of less than 1.”
“That’s incredible!” said Rachel. “The film I use in my camera
is ASA 400.”
“The lower the ASA,” explained Norman, “the less grain and the
better the resolution, but then you need more light to record an image.
That’s why we’ll need an exposure of several seconds, during
which everything in the sandbox must remain absolutely still.”
The other packages contained standard photographic solutions
for developing, fixing and washing the film. There was also a
packet of bleach, with which Norman said we could get rid of the
silver nitrate on the developed plate, if necessary, to improve the
light transmission. That would brighten the hologram.
“Holographic plates are developed in the same way as ordinary
black and white photographic film,” said Norman. “The plate is exposed
to the laser light in total darkness, developed for five minutes,
placed in a stop bath for thirty seconds, then fixed. We’ll need
some basins for these solutions and also for water to rinse the plate
between each stage.”