[1] Trumbull first came to the public's attention for his work on the groundbreaking special effects in movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Andromeda Strain.
Trumbull developed the Showscan film process in the late 1970s and early 1980s when he became interested in increasing the fidelity or definition of movies.
Similar to the quality issues addressed later by high-definition television, the visual fidelity of movies was limited by the medium.
When projected onto a large screen, the grain of 35 mm film stock is often quite visible, reducing the quality of the displayed image.
There was a demonstration of Showscan in 1986 at Showest, an annual convention for theater owners in Las Vegas, since replaced by Cinemacon.
[3][4] In 1992, Trumbull, Geoffrey Williamson, Robert Auguste and Edmund DiGiulio received a Scientific and Engineering Academy Award for the design of the CP-65 Showscan camera system.