Background

The first diffraction grating was made by an American astronomer and clockmaker, David Rittenhouse (1732-96), who in 1785 reported constructing a half-inch wide grating with fifty-three apertures. Overlooked by history, it has now become clear that he invented the diffraction grating 35 years before it became known in Europe.
cf: Rittenhouse - The Journal of the American Scientific Instrument Enterprise, Vol. 1, p. 1, Vol. 12, p. 107 ff; Vol. 5 (1991) pp. 1-16

A special type of diffraction grating called the echelon was invented by A.A. Michelson (1852-1931), the first American to win the Nobel Prize. Avoiding the limitations of ruling machines, this grating was made by stacking thin glass plates and tipping them to one side. The collected diffracted light appears near grazing incidence to the grating plane. In his Studies in Optics (1928 reprinted  1995 by Dover), Michelson revisited his invention:

A method to display holograms in ordinary incoherent polychromatic illumination such as an incandescent bulb is developed at Polaroid Corporation by Stephen Benton. The breakthrough is attributable to throwing away much of the information in the original hologram, notably the vertical parallax portion. While this improves display procedures, although obtaining the original hologram still requires that the subject remain motionless for long periods of time.