Quantum carpets, carpets of light

Abstract

In 1836 Henry Fox Talbot, an inventor of photography, published the results of some experiments in optics that he had previously demonstrated at a British Association meeting in Bristol (figure 1a). "It was very curious to observe that though the grating was greatly out of the focus of the lens...the appearance of the bands was perfectly distinct and well defined...the experiments are communicated in the hope that they may prove interesting to the cultivators of optical science."