A UK museum catalogues 901 hologram-related items online

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What the database documents, as retrieved

The Science Museum Group states its collection database covers "over 500,000 objects and archives" across five UK institutions. A search on the term "hologram" returns 901 catalogue entries — 890 objects, 5 people and 6 documents — including 380 individual holograms and 15 hologram sets, spanning white-light reflection and laser transmission holograms, embossed and rainbow types, lenticulars, and equipment such as a "prototype 'Holocam 50' laser machine" from 1986. The earliest item the search surfaces is described as the "first successful hologram made by Argon Laser, 1965," and the single largest contributing collection, 315 items, is credited to Martin Richardson.

Reading a catalogue record as evidence

A museum object record is not a technical paper, but it typically fixes maker, date, materials and an object number — exactly the metadata needed to date a technique's practical, exhibited history rather than its laboratory first description. One record states its subject plainly: a "white-light reflection hologram of Lindow Man," made in 1987 by Richmond Holographic Studios Ltd for the British Museum, catalogue number 1987-1028, a copy on glass. That single entry documents who made a hologram, of what, for which institution, and roughly when, without requiring anyone researching it today to have seen the object. A reflection hologram of this kind needs only an ordinary point-source light — a halogen bulb or the sun — to view; no laser is needed at viewing time, and the image has a single-viewer sweet spot that shifts as the head moves, unlike a flat photograph.

What the count does and does not establish

The database, via the collection's own home page, warns that "some historic records may include inaccurate or offensive content," a caution worth carrying into any older entry. The headline figure of 901 mixes object, person and document records, so the more precise count of physical holograms is the 380 individual pieces plus 15 sets, not the round number. What counts as "hologram" in the museum's own tagging is also an indexing choice, not an independent census of the medium, so the total says more about this museum's holdings than about holography as a whole.

• Does the online record include a photograph, and could that single static image misrepresent how the piece looks off-axis?
• Does the museum's technique tag reliably separate reflection, transmission and embossed holograms, or blur them?
• Is a given object on public display, in store, or documented only as a digital record with no current physical access?

As a dated, attributed record of who made what and for whom, the catalogue is strong evidence; as a complete survey of holography, it is only as complete as one museum's own acquisitions and tagging choices.