The origin of the Scintillogram is best told by the originator of the his description in his own words, here.
Fast forward to about 4 decades later. A character named Jon Seymour bought the last of the Gallery 1134 incunubula that hadn't been previously picked over and had a deadline from the new owner of that building, Shawn Uldridge, to remove his stuff from the premises so the rehab of the building could proceed on August 13th, 2015.
Jon hadn't rented a storage space at that point to receive his new found wealth, so it was decided that his cache would go to Victor Heredia's building, which was only fitting, as Victor was one of the first employees of Gallery 1134, dating back to 1976, and built most of the infrastructure there, meaning labs, displays, gallery lighting, etc. So Jon's collection could be curated there before moving to a site of Jon's choosing.
Moving day arrived, and everything (except what Jon could fit into his Volvo station wagon) ended up in Victor Heredia's apartment building. It totally filled up the basement of his four flat, from the laundry room t back door, through his workshop, and up front to his office and electronics workbench. Stuff he had known and built almost 4 decades previously had come home to haunt him!
A few weeks later, September 9th, 2015, a small conclave of Chicago's pioneers in wavefront reconstruction (Rick Bruck, Bob Hess, Ed Wesly) met Jon Seymour at Hacienda Heredia to drool over the treasure, sprawled over Victor's basement and vacant second floor apartment. Here is Bob's own description of the find on Facebook's Holography Group page, (scroll down to December 3rd, 2017 or click here):
"...and I went to see the group of things that were bought as the remains of the FAR&HC and moved into storage. I remember walking among the piles of boxes and old displays and seeing a tall cardboard cylinder with a distinctive cutout I knew to be an early Multiplex type display. There was a large piece of black vinyl tape across the front of it, but there was [peel and stick] lettering underneath. I peeled the tape away and saw the white letters spelled out "scintihologram". I knew what it was, having recalled a previous mention of it here (or on another forum) by John Fairstein, and left that day believing word of the discovery would get to John via the new owner of the materials. Better late than never I guess.
Holy cow! Us holographic scholars knew the back story of the 'gram from John Fairstein's site (link above), and were totally flabbergasted that it was in our hands!
But by this point Jon Seymour had excused himself for the day, so I notified him later that night that one of the great holographic grails had surfaced! And he was even wowed by its description on John's site, as this was a medical application as well as a physics one, which was it was right up his alley, and couldn't wait to see it for himself. (But alas and alack, he never did!)
I asked him if he wanted me to contact John Fairstein about this discovery, but he said he would like to have the pleasure, as he had paid for it and he wanted to promote his Chicago Holographic Initiative as being the benefactor. So I figured I should let the onus be upon the owner, seeing as he had the link to John's web page.
Fast forward to October, 2016, over a year since the Scintihologram was discovered, and even though I had been bugging Jon on a regular basis to go back over to Treasure Island and put some time in on organizing his collection in the meantime, he never did. Finally he returned to Victor's on the 14th, and was wondering where all his stuff was as he surveyed Victor's woodshop. Victor, being a working artist and rehabbing landlord, needs his workshop on a 24/7 basis, and to not to have it cluttered by a bunch of junk for which he was being paid no rent. "Where are all the books?!" Jon thundered, and I could see that they were in plain sight on the shelves in front of him, having been absorbed into Bibliotheca Heredia. And who could not argue, rightfully so?
So Jon stormed out, upset with Victor, upset with me for steering his stuff there and not keeping an eye on it, but he did confess later to realizing that he should be most upset with himself for dropping the ball. And after Jon left Victor's, I hung out for a few more beers, and Victor reminded me he knew of his landlord's rights with respect to abandoned property.
Then about a week later, on October 25th, I looked out my back porch window without my eyeglasses, as I had just awoken after my afternoon siesta, and couldn't believe my fuzzy eyes as there was more than the usual amount of out of focus junk back there! I grabbed my goggles and got out there, and found a gaggle of holographic garbage!
Victor and some unidentified accomplice(s) dropped a vanload of stuff in my back yard, probably from the alley side, while I snoozed! The opposite of a robbery! Why couldn't they have left a few hundred dollar bills instead?
So I called up Jon Seymour, who came out the next day and filled up his Volvo station wagon with the most valuable of this holographic manna. He was very upset about this recent turn of events, so upset that he never came back for the rest.
Inventorying this pile revealed the oddest assortment of stuff left on my doorstep, but the most important of the lot was the Scintihologram, unfortunately without the display that had been camouflaged by Loren Billings. Jason Sapan urged me to return it to John Fairstein, and I concurred. But I still thought that the guy who paid for it should have first crack at its repatriation.
Zip on up another year, October of 2017, when I sent Jon Seymour an email telling him that in 2 weeks it would be the one year anniversary of his junk sitting in my garage and garden shed and what did he want to do with it. He replied to that email a couple of days later, on the weekend, telling me that relatives were in town, and assuring me he would call me the following week. Which became a month, and still no word from him, so like Victor, I figured this was abandoned on my doorstep, and it's now mine to do with what I wish!
So I fulfilled John Fairstein's wish, that of being reunited with his Scintihologram! I got in contact with him via Facebook, told him the story above over the phone, got his snail mail address and deposited a bundle in the Bank of Good Karma, so I hope!
And here he is, by his mailbox!
And here is the Scintihologram in Stockholm, courtesy of Hans Bjelkhagen:
Disposition of the display is unknown at the moment.