Cube Tube

Most of the technologies that create three-dimensional images-- from virtual-reality helmets to holograms to the cheap glasses handed out for watching 1950s 3-D movies--are grounded in deception. In one way or another, they all trick the eye into converting flat images to three- dimensional ones. Stanford engineer Elizabeth Downing has broken with that tradition of visual subterfuge. She recently developed a fundamentally new way of creating three-dimensional images. Her images--which can be made to move--actually have height, length, and width, all in an inch-high cube.