Cinerama is a widescreen process that originally projected images simultaneously from three synchronized 35mm projectors onto a huge, deeply curved screen, subtending 146-degrees of arc.

Cinerama was presented to the public as a theatrical event, with reserved seating and printed programs, and audience members often dressed in their best attire for the evening.

Cinerama was invented by Fred Waller (1886–1954)[2] and languished in the laboratory for several years before Waller, joined by Hazard "Buzz" Reeves, brought it to the attention of Lowell Thomas who, first with Mike Todd and later with Merian C. Cooper, produced a commercially viable demonstration of Cinerama that opened on Broadway on September 30, 1952.

Waller had earlier developed an eleven-projector system called "Vitarama" at the Petroleum Industry exhibit in the 1939 New York World's Fair.

[5][6] According to film historian Martin Hart, in the original Cinerama system "the camera aspect ratio [was] 2.59:1" with an "optimum screen image, with no architectural constraints, [of] about 2.65:1, with the extreme top and bottom cropped slightly to hide anomalies".

They projected onto a deeply curved screen, the outer thirds of which were made of over 1,100 strips of material mounted on "louvers" like a vertical Venetian blind, to prevent light projected to each end of the screen from reflecting to the opposite end and washing out the image.

Optical limitations with the design of the camera itself meant that if distant scenes joined perfectly, closer objects did not.

Lowell Thomas, an investor in the company with Mike Todd, was still raving about the process in his memoirs thirty years later.

[citation needed] In addition to the visual impact of the image, Cinerama was one of the first processes to use multitrack magnetic sound.

The system, developed by Hazard E. Reeves, one of the Cinerama investors, played back from a fully coated 35 mm magnetic film with seven tracks of sound targeting a speaker layout similar to the more modern SDDS.

Cinerama projectors used a device to slightly blur the join lines to make the jitter less noticeable.

The impact these films had on the big screen cannot be assessed from television or video, or even from 'scope prints, which marry the three images together with the seams clearly visible.

Notables attending included New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey, violinist Fritz Kreisler, James A. Farley, Metropolitan Opera manager Rudolf Bing, NBC chairman David Sarnoff, CBS chairman William S. Paley,; Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, and Hollywood mogul Louis B. Mayer.

In The New York Times a few days after the system premiered, film critic Bosley Crowther wrote:[10] Somewhat the same sensations that the audience in Koster and Bial's Music Hall must have felt on that night, years ago, when motion pictures were first publicly flashed on a large screen were probably felt by the people who witnessed the first public showing of Cinerama the other night...the shrill screams of the ladies and the pop-eyed amazement of the men when the huge screen was opened to its full size and a thrillingly realistic ride on a roller-coaster was pictured upon it, attested to the shock of the surprise.

A technical review by Waldemar Kaempffert published in The New York Times on the same day hailed the system.

The Bell Telephone Laboratories and Professor Harold Burris-Meyer of Stevens Institute of Technology demonstrated the underlying principles years ago."

The three projections were admirably blended, yet there were visible bands of demarcation on the screen.Although existing theatres were adapted to show Cinerama films, in 1961 and 1962 the non-profit Cooper Foundation of Lincoln, Nebraska, designed and built three near-identical circular "super-Cinerama" theaters in Denver, Colorado; St. Louis Park, Minnesota (a Minneapolis suburb); and Omaha, Nebraska.

The first such theater, the Cooper Theater,[11] built in Denver, featured a 146-degree louvered screen (measuring 105 by 35 feet (32 by 11 meters)), 814 seats, courtesy lounges on the sides of the theatre for relaxation during intermission (including concessions and smoking facilities), and a ceiling which routed air and heating through small vent slots to inhibit noise from the building's ventilation equipment.

It closed on September 28, 2000 as a result of the bankruptcy of Carmike Cinemas and the final film presented was the rap music-drama Turn It Up.

These London venues were directly operated by Cinerama themselves; elsewhere in the UK three-strip Cinerama venues were operated by the two main UK circuits, ABC at ABC Bristol Road, Birmingham and Coliseum, Glasgow, Rank at Gaumont, Birmingham, and Queens, Newcastle and by independents at the Park Hall, Cardiff, Theatre Royal, Manchester and Abbey, Liverpool.

The use of Ultra Panavision 70 for certain scenes (such as the river raft sequence) later printed onto the three Cinerama panels, proved that a more or less satisfactory wide-screen image could be photographed without the three cameras.

The less wide but still spectacular Super Panavision 70 was used to film the Cinerama presentations Grand Prix (1966); 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which also featured scenes shot in Todd-AO and MCS-70); Ice Station Zebra (1968); and Krakatoa, East of Java (1969), which also featured scenes shot in Todd-AO.

Some films were shot in the somewhat lower resolution Super Technirama 70 process for Cinerama release, including Circus World (1964) and Custer of the West (1967).

In 2008, a Blu-ray disc of How The West Was Won was released, offering a recreation of Cinerama for home viewing.

Furthermore, as a second viewing option, 3D mapping technology was used to produce an image that approximates the curved screen, called "SmileBox".

Since then, other Cinerama films, including The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, The Golden Head, and South Seas Adventure have also had "SmileBox" edition blu ray home-media releases.

[27] Cinerama successors, Todd-AO, CinemaScope, and the various 70 mm formats, all attempted to equal or surpass its grandeur while avoiding its problems to greater or lesser degrees of success.

Only two films with traditional story lines were made, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm and How the West Was Won.

[citation needed] The posting suggests that other vendors provide a similar function under different names.

(Ironically, some widescreen cinema processes—not Cinerama—displayed a fault known as "anamorphic mumps,"[31] which consisted of a lateral stretch of objects closer to the camera).