Serendipity, Punctuated

Abstract

Laser divestment entered the field of art conservation through a nonlinear sequence of positive accidental events (serendipity) that involved the cinema industry, the invention of spread-spectrum and frequency-hopping communications, nuclear space propulsion, and oceanography. The unlikely chain of events began with the invention of a secure military communications system by a Viennese motion picture actress (1942). A first evaluation of the novel communications concept took place during a high-altitude nuclear test (TEAK) over the Pacific Ocean in 1958. The secure radio link proved to be a failure; however, analyses of the backscattered electromagnetic radiation contributed to the realization that nuclear-explosion plasmas need not be spherically symmetrical. Nobel Laureate Freeman Dyson exploited this nuclear option to guide in the design and prototype development of the ORION spaceship that was to rendezvous with the planet Saturn ill 1970. For this space vehicle the high-specific-impulse nuclear propulsion was generated by means of superradiant X-ray-beam ablation of the spaceship's rear surface by the remote detonation of a sequence of asymmetrical bombs projected rearward from the ORION. In the wake of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1962) ORION was canceled. Through a Scripps Institution of Oceanography project in Venice (involving ORION scientists and holographic technology) the nondestructive radiation-ablation process found a resurrection ill the field of stone conservation (1972). Ironically, the first major art-conservation project to employ laser ablation (Porta della Carta of the Palazzo Ducale) was paid for in part by Warner Brothers Motion Picture Studios (1980). Finally, the "Venice Laser Statue Cleaner" followed the Viennese actress (Hedy Lamarr/Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) to Hollywood where it was employed to treat the granite veneer of the Warner Center (1981).