Cinemascope Information for the Theater
Published in October 1954 by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation - Second Edition Third Revision
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION
A year has now elapsed since CinemaScope was first introduced into the theatre. The fact that stands out most clearly from this past experience is that the basic engineering decisions behind CinemaScope have been supported and confirmed—nowhere has there been any evidence indicating that the film specifications, optical concepts, or stereophonic sound engineering designs should be changed f the standards chosen.
As time goes on, technological improvements will inevitably be made; a firm foundation has been provided for these improvements. For example, factual evidence is at hand that the life of the magnetic sound heads shortly to reach the market will be markedly longer than that of the present clusters; even though the present heads, if properly adjusted, in the theatre, will reproduce satisfactorily many millions of feet of film.
The new sprocket holes—where the sprockets have been installed as specified herein—have yielded longer film life than the formerly used positive perforations; reliability of magnetic tracks has been established, and the cost of application has decreased markedly.
This booklet has therefore been completely revised in an effort to bring it up to date, in the light of this experience, and particularly to help the theatre owner, exhibitor, projectionist, and service engineer to maintain his theatre equipment in such manner as to profit fully from the potentials of CinemaScope.
The information contained herein was compiled
by the Research and Development Division of the
Twentieth Century-For Film Corporation, under the
direction of Mr. E. I. Sponable, with the collaboration
of Messrs.H. E. Bragg, L. D. Grignon, and F. D. Leslie.
October 1954
