Cinerama

Wide-screen process devised in 1937 by Fred Waller of Paramount's special-effects department. Originally three 35-mm cameras and three projectors were used to record and project a single image. Three aspects of the image were recorded and then projected on a large curved screen, with the result that the images blended together to produce an illusion of vastness. The first Cinerama film was the travelogue This Is Cinerama (1952); the first story feature was How the West Was Won (1962).

By the mid-1950s hundreds of ‘Cinerama theatres’ had opened across the USA, and in Japan, Britain, Italy, and France. The screen had to be at least 15.5 m/50 ft wide and 7.5 m/25 ft high. However, due to the vast expense of the equipment the craze was short-lived, and by the late 1960s Cinerama was abandoned in favour of a single-lens 70-mm anamorphic process.