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| Three-Dimensional Vision | |
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, former Engineering
Experiment Station research engineer Richard Steenblik worked
tenaciously to develop a three-dimensional vision technique that
has today provided the basis for a successful and popular
commercial optical film product used in certain 3-D glasses.
The Chromatek Inc. product, called ChromaDepth 3-D, uses
pieces of microptic film to selectively shift the points at which
different colors of light are focused. Known as
chromostereoscopy, the technique makes objects of different
colors appear to be at varying distances from the viewer.
The technique developed after Steenblik noticed slight 3-D
effects produced by a video game. The effect was caused by an
imperfection called chromatic aberration in the lenses of the
eye. Also, Steenblik knew the brain expects that red color often
comes from objects close to the viewer, while blue tends to come
from objects far away.
Steenblik worked to enhance the effect and concluded that
passing light through two different liquids would provide the
necessary shifting, known as refraction. In his first prototype
model, he used two liquids of Chinese cinnamon oil and glycerin,
which provided the opposing refraction needed to produce right-
eye and left-eye views from the same two-dimensional image.
Steenblik patented the technique in 1983 and soon thereafter
founded Atlanta-based Chromatek Inc. with New York businessman
Frederick Lauter. The company owners then developed 3-D glasses
based on double prisms, rather than liquids, but they did not
work as well as Steenblik hoped.
Early collaboration with binary optics scientists at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology allowed for the inexpensive
manufacture of the complex prism patterns needed to produce the
3-D effect. The new product debuted in 1992.
Georgia Tech licensed the 3-D vision technique to Chromatek,
while MIT licensed the binary optics technology to the company.
Today, Chromatek markets the low-cost, easy-to-implement
stereoscopic 3-D ChromaDepth process for all color display media.
ChromaDepth 3-D images look normal until viewed with the patented
ChromaDepth 3-D optics. Then they jump into dramatic 3-D. More
than 100 million pair of ChromaDepth 3-D glasses have been
purchased since 1992 for various marketing and promotional uses.
Georgia Tech file photo
A three-dimensional vision technique patented in 1983 by a
former GTRI researcher is used today in the production of a
commercial optical film product used in 3-D glasses. Inventor
Richard Steenblik (shown here) founded Chromatek Inc. in
Alpharetta, Ga., to manufacture and market the product.
For more information, contact Richard Steenblik, Chromatek Inc.,
11450-F North Fulton Industrial Boulevard, Alpharetta, GA 30201. (Telephone: 404-772-9852)
(E-mail: nowuc3d@mindspring.com)
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