Haidee Wasson
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520291508
- eISBN:
- 9780520965263
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291508.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter, by Haidee Wasson, addresses the development and use of portable film projectors by the American military during World War II and after. It examines the close ties to the technological ...
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This chapter, by Haidee Wasson, addresses the development and use of portable film projectors by the American military during World War II and after. It examines the close ties to the technological wing of the American film industry and situates the innovation and use of film projectors in the context of ongoing experiments with projectors, projection, and film viewing within the armed services. This includes a discussion of standard operating equipment that became widely integrated into military operations as well as more specialized devices: gunnery trainers, consoles, data analyzers, and dynamic projection devices that made moving images into elastic, animated performance pieces. This chapter demonstrates that the military developed an expansive, global viewing platform that normalized film presentation and viewing within a wide range of military activities. This was an unprecedented use of portable film technology, and it helped to catalyze its postwar proliferation in military and civilian life thereafter.Less
This chapter, by Haidee Wasson, addresses the development and use of portable film projectors by the American military during World War II and after. It examines the close ties to the technological wing of the American film industry and situates the innovation and use of film projectors in the context of ongoing experiments with projectors, projection, and film viewing within the armed services. This includes a discussion of standard operating equipment that became widely integrated into military operations as well as more specialized devices: gunnery trainers, consoles, data analyzers, and dynamic projection devices that made moving images into elastic, animated performance pieces. This chapter demonstrates that the military developed an expansive, global viewing platform that normalized film presentation and viewing within a wide range of military activities. This was an unprecedented use of portable film technology, and it helped to catalyze its postwar proliferation in military and civilian life thereafter.
Donald G. Godfrey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038280
- eISBN:
- 9780252096150
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038280.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This is the first biography of the important but long-forgotten American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins (1867–1934). The book documents the life of Jenkins from his childhood in Indiana and early ...
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This is the first biography of the important but long-forgotten American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins (1867–1934). The book documents the life of Jenkins from his childhood in Indiana and early life in the West to his work as a prolific inventor whose productivity was cut short by an early death. Jenkins was an inventor who made a difference. As one of America's greatest independent inventors, Jenkins' passion was to meet the needs of his day and the future. In 1895 he produced the first film projector able to show a motion picture on a large screen, coincidentally igniting the first film boycott among his Quaker viewers when the film he screened showed a woman's ankle. Jenkins produced the first American television pictures in 1923, and developed the only fully operating broadcast television station in Washington, D.C. transmitting to ham operators from coast to coast as well as programming for his local audience. This biography raises the profile of C. Francis Jenkins from his former place in the footnotes to his rightful position as a true pioneer of today's film and television. Along the way, it provides a window into the earliest days of both motion pictures and television as well as the now-vanished world of the independent inventor.Less
This is the first biography of the important but long-forgotten American inventor Charles Francis Jenkins (1867–1934). The book documents the life of Jenkins from his childhood in Indiana and early life in the West to his work as a prolific inventor whose productivity was cut short by an early death. Jenkins was an inventor who made a difference. As one of America's greatest independent inventors, Jenkins' passion was to meet the needs of his day and the future. In 1895 he produced the first film projector able to show a motion picture on a large screen, coincidentally igniting the first film boycott among his Quaker viewers when the film he screened showed a woman's ankle. Jenkins produced the first American television pictures in 1923, and developed the only fully operating broadcast television station in Washington, D.C. transmitting to ham operators from coast to coast as well as programming for his local audience. This biography raises the profile of C. Francis Jenkins from his former place in the footnotes to his rightful position as a true pioneer of today's film and television. Along the way, it provides a window into the earliest days of both motion pictures and television as well as the now-vanished world of the independent inventor.
