Cinerama Corporation collection

1950-1986

Cinerama, a wide-screen, cinematic process, was developed by Fred Waller of Paramount Pictures in 1932 and promoted by Hazard E. Reeves. Cinerama was first featured at the 1939 New York World's Fair as "Vitarama". In 1952, the process "Cinerama" was presented by the Cinerama (Corporation) at the Broadway Theatre in New York in a show entitled "This is Cinerama".

The original Cinerama process used three 35mm cameras to record three aspects of a single image simultaneously. When viewing the process, a special, huge, curved screen, angled about 165 degrees was used. Three projectors were used with images viewed at 26 frames per second. In the 1952 "This is Cinerama" production, the curved screen measured 75 feet across and 55 feet high. Because the films from the three projectors did not always match, a second Cinerama process was conceived. The Cinerama (Corporation) switched to a single lens system, using a 70mm process with a curved screen.