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The year 2022 marks the 75th anniversary of Dennis Gabor’s invention of the holographic method, what he called “microscopy by reconstructed wave-fronts”, as well as the 60th anniversary of the publication in 1962 of two seminal papers in the field of holography: the introduction of the reflection hologram by Yuri Denisyuk, and the description of the holographic process from the point of view of communication theory by Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks. Within the framework of these celebrations, a historical review of the origins of holography is presented with special emphasis on the contributions of Gabor, Denisyuk and Leith to the development of holography. This work was supported by the by “Generalitat Valenciana” of Spain (projects PROMETEO/2021/006 and IDIFEDER/2021/014, cofunded by European Union through the FEDER Programme) and by the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” of Spain (projects FIS2017-82919-R and PID2019-106601RB-I00).

The year 2022 marks the 75th anniversary of Dennis Gabor’s invention of the holographic method and for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971. The year 2022 also marks the sixtieth anniversary of the publication in 1962 of two seminal papers in the field of holography. In one of them Yuri Denisyuk introduces the reflection hologram and in the other paper Emmeth Leith and Juris Upatnieks describe the holographic process from a communication- theory viewpoint. In this paper, we carry out a brief description of the different “origins” of holography, making special mention to the way Gabor, Denisyuk y Leith established the basis, which made possible the spectacular development of holography from the invention of the laser at the beginning of the decade of 1960. This work was supported by the “Generalitat Valenciana” of Spain (projects PROMETEO/2021/006; IDIFEDER/2021/014, potential FEDER funding) and by the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación” of Spain (project PID2019-106601RB-I00).