Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film, 1838-1952

6. Public Exhibition of 3-D Films Begins

6 Public Exhibition of 3-D Films Begins Developments around 1900 As public motion picture exhibition began to take place in Europe and the United States, numerous inventors proposed a variety of devices for capture and display of moving images in three dimensions. An inventor named Hymmen, in a kind of technological throwback to an earlier era, was granted a patent (no. 24,804) in Great Britain in 1897 for a spinning drum to be used in conjunction with a stereoscope for viewing three-dimensional moving images.1 Gosser has enumerated many of these devices, which he characterized as "interesting but generally less influential."2 Most of these inventions were very likely only developed to the stage of a prototype. A British instrument maker named Frederick Wenham, for example, created a series often stereoscopic images for viewing on two phenakistoscope disks. With a letter of 1895, Wenham claimed to have built the invention in 1852.3 As with the stereoscopic moving images of Sellers and Muybridge, Wenham arranged a sequence of still stereo images to simulate motion. Similarly, in 1865, Henry Mayhew, a British photojournalism had persuaded his brother to create a series of six stereoscopic images. The stereo pairs were mounted on a rotating paddlewheel device for stereoscopic viewing as moving images. Stereoscopic disk projection systems were developed as late as 1897 with the work of Thomas Cunningham Porter in Great Britain. Porter s device, patented in Britain (no. 12,921), used an electromagnetic shutter in the stereoscopic glasses that were linked to the projector and alternately projected left- and right-eye images. In 1898, the Lumière brothers, after introducing stereoscopic still technology to the photographic market, in Public Exhibition of 3-D Films Begins 87 France patented (no. 305,092) a polygonal plate glass device with double rows of stereo images making intermittent movement and viewed in 3-D through a shutter. Stereo cameras to capture motion on film, however, became prevalent after 1900. Frank Donisthorpe, son of the inventor Wordsworth Donisthorpe , took out a British patent (no. 1,483) on January 21, 1903, for stereooptic devices for use with twin cameras and projectors. Donisthorpe proposed anaglyphic projection for his twin-strip system. Carl Schmidt and Charles Dupuis were issued a French patent (no. 331,406) on April 21, 1903, for a twin-strip film system using an electromagnetic shutter with which left- and right-eye images alternated through the use of a revolving mirror. Spectators were provided lorgnette stereo glasses affixed to the chair that were connected by wires to the projector. This system, as well as Porters, foreshadowed Laurens Hammond s Teleview process that would debut in 1922 in New York. Shortly after the turn of the century, inventors were also working on stereoscopic attachments for existing cameras that could produce threedimensional pictures. Wilhelm Salow, of Elberfeld, Germany, for example, was issued an American patent (no. 840,378) on January 1, 1907, for a "Stereoscopic Attachment for Photographic Cameras." Salow's attachment incorporated "two rectangular equilateral prisms" and was used for still cameras to "produce two pictures consecutively in the camera, with the distance between the pictures equal to the average distance between the eyes." The advantage of Salow s device was that it allowed stereoscopic photographs to "be taken in a perfect manner by means of an ordinary photographic camera."4 Aloys Wayditch of New York was granted a U.S. patent (no. 1,071,837) on September 2, 1913, for an "Attachment for Taking Cameras for Making Stereoscopic Moving-Picture Films." Wayditch s device consisted of "stationary side-mirrors placed at an angle to the vertical longitudinal center-plane of the camera" with "parallel mirrors placed back to back intermediately between the side-mirrors." An adjustment provided for moving the "sidemirrors into proper angular position relatively to the vertical center-plane of the camera." The attachment alternated the left- and right-eye images on a single strip of film. Such a mirror device prefigured many of the dual-band 3-D camera rigs of the early 1950s, which used mirrors and a micrometer for adjustment of converging optical axes.5 Wayditch was issued a subsequent U.S. patent (no. 1,276,838) on Au- No, 640,378. PATENTED JAN. 1, 1907. W. SALOW, STEREOSCOPIC ATTACHMENT FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC CAMERAS. APPLICATION FILLD NOV. 13, 190Ü. .:-/ ~J**¿gr.'/m *>3£*i(/.2. r^hj¿yw^bq Beam splitters like those from Wilhelm Salow, "Stereoscopic...