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

233 Pages·2007·5.76 MB·English

by  Ray Zone

Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3-D Film
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Stereoscopic Cinema &
the Origins of 3-D Film,
1838 –1952
Ray Zone
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY
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Ray Zone is an award-winning 3-D artist, author, and speaker whose articles about 3-D
cinema have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, American Cinematographer, and Hollywood
Reporter. A 3-D film producer, Zone has produced or published over a hundred 3-D
comic books and is the author of 3-D Filmmakers: Conversations with Creators of
Stereoscopic Motion Pictures (2005). Zone’s website is viewable in anaglyphic 3-D and is at
www.ray3dzone.com.
Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National
Endowment for the Humanities.
© 2007 by The University Press of Kentucky
Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College,
Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society,
Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University,
Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky,
University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.
Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com
Frontispiece: March 1925 ad from Motion Picture News.
11 10 09 08 07 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Zone, Ray.
Stereoscopic cinema and the origins of 3-D film, 1838–1952 / Ray Zone.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8131-2461-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. 3-D films—History. I. Title.
TR854.Z68 2007
778.5'34109—dc22 2007012691
This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the
American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.
Manufactured in the United States of America.
Member of the Association of
American University Presses
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Contents
Foreword by Lenny Lipton vii
Acknowledgments xi
Prologue 1
1. Stereography Begins 5
2. The Peep Show Tradition 19
3. Motion Pictures Begin 35
4. Stereoscopic Projection 53
5. Cinema’s Novelty Period 73
6. Public Exhibition of 3-D Films Begins 86
7. A Wave of Stereo 103
8. Essaying Utopia 128
9. Stereoscopic Cinema Proves Itself 141
10. The Stereoscopic Overture Finishes 163
Epilogue 181
Notes 191
Index 213
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Foreword
IT WAS CHRISTMAS VACATION IN 1952. The snow was falling in Rocke-
feller Plaza in Manhattan, but I was warm and dry as I stood in the queue
with Harvey, Morty, Jeffrey, and Robby, waiting to see ourselves on closed-
circuit color TV in the storefront RCA Exhibition Hall. We inched along,
mingling with the holiday crowd, until we came into the field of view of
the lens of the refrigerator-sized color camera and at last saw ourselves on a
nearly circular color tube, in bright “living colors.” Only there were too
many living colors. The picture was out of alignment or, more properly,
convergence. No such shortcoming could dim my enthusiasm, but when I
got home to tell my mom how much I wanted a color TV, she wisely said:
“We’ll buy one once it’s perfected.” It turns out we never had a color TV in
our living room (I bought her one years later), and neither did our Brook-
lyn neighbors, for it took more than twenty years and a fortune in research
and development and marketing before the Radio Corporation of America
(RCA) and its licensees achieved a 50 percent penetration for color TV sets.
By that time, the image quality had improved, but the system, named after
a standards body empowered by RCA, was mocked in engineering circles,
and NTSC (National Television Standards Committee) came to be known
as Never Twice the Same Color.
As I read the manuscript of Ray Zone’s technology history, I thought
of that day seemingly a lifetime ago, when my friends and I waited to catch
a glimpse of ourselves, and I think about the adoption of technology in my
lifetime. Today, practically all of us are using computers—which are still an
unfinished piece of business. An automobile with the characteristics of a
personal computer would be classified as an unreliable and dangerous in-
strument. Fortunately, computer crashes are more frequent than car crashes.
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viii Foreword
So what does it take for us to accept a new technology? Ray Zone’s history
digs at that question and intertwines the efforts of inventors who sought to
create the motion picture with those who sought to create the stereoscopic
motion picture (often the same inventor), and he makes the case that the
development of stereoscopic technologies strongly influenced the movies.
He makes the case with scores of examples, and what is so interesting about
this is that other writers have not noticed this connection. The stereoscopic
cinema, like early color television, is not held in high esteem. It is more
frequently derided as an eye-straining fad than praised for its potential con-
tribution to the art of the cinema. This may explain why no one else has
made Ray’s connection. That’s because writers like Ray, who have a measure
of respect for the three-dimensional (3-D) cinema, are few and far between.
Most lack the vision.
I have spent most of my life as an inventor of stereoscopic moving
image systems. Lately my work has taken me to the theatrical cinema, al-
though it was more than twenty years ago that I made the basic invention
that led to the latest renaissance in 3-D digital movies. I was aware of some
of the history of the medium, and I knew something about the men who
put their time and energy—and to tell the truth in many cases, their life’s
blood—into the invention of the cinema and stereoscopic displays. But
Ray knows a lot more of the story.
It is a history replete with many false starts and often of people work-
ing ceaselessly only to have their inventions die a stillbirth. It is a history
that could not have made any sense in the moment and can be seen to have
a form only with the passage of time and the boon of hindsight. Ray has
presented the facts of the early days of the parallel development of cinema
and stereoscopic display technology and to some extent left it to us to con-
nect the dots. It is often difficult to say how one inventor influenced an-
other. Were they aware of the work of their contemporaries? How many of
the many inventions described in this book got built? And how many that
got built actually worked? Ray has comments about this and relies wher-
ever possible on eyewitness reports, but these are often inexpert and contra-
dictory, which is what one would expect in historical research.
In my view, the way to best trace the milestones is to connect the dots
between actual products. Such an approach involves emphasizing devices
that were offered in the marketplace with at least a modicum of commer-
cial success—not because the ability to monetize an invention is necessar-
ily a measure of its worth but, rather, because it’s a measure of how many
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Foreword ix
people saw it in use. That’s because the inventors are in the theaters along
with the rest of the public, and a visual experience—like mine at the RCA
Exhibition Hall—is more profound and influential than reading a paper or
a patent.
This introducer is not out of things to say about Ray Zone’s book, but
I am just about out of my allotment of words. As a professional inventor in
this field, it is only natural that I would feel that this book was meant for
me, but I think it is a book that will be important for years to come to both
enthusiasts and students of the technology of the cinema and stereoscopy.

—Lenny Lipton
Laurel Canyon, California
Lenny Lipton is the inventor of the field sequential technology at the heart of digital
3-D cinema, CTO of RealD, and the author of numerous books on stereoscopic televi-
sion and cinema.
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