1. Multi-resolution analysis

1.1 Discovering wavelets

Jean Morlet's astonishing discovery of wavelets in 1975 was not only not exploited industrially, but royally ignored by the French oil company Elf Aquitaine, since absorbed by Total, Morlet's former employer. Perhaps this company, which was public at the time, was traumatized by the scam of the century: the famous "sniffer planes" supposed to miraculously "sniff out" the presence of oil. This politico-financial affair, which cost the taxpayer more than one billion one hundred million francs between 1975 and 1979, also cost the job of polytechnic engineer Jean Morlet. Indeed, the collateral victim of this abracadabrantesque affair was certainly the father of the ondelettes, who, by way of thanks, was put into early retirement.

It wasn't...