THE VISTARAMA STORY

VISTARAMA came into being when Carl Dudley, president of Dudley Pictures Corporation, attended a demonstration of Cinemascope. He was so impressed and so completely convinced that this was the only practical and most acceptable system, destined to become the new dimension of the motion picture, he set out to develop a compatible system.

Mr. E. J. Quinn, Chicago businessman and personal friend, brought the Simpson Optical Manufacturing Company and its president, Mr. Stewart Eagan, into association with Carl Dudley and it was concluded that an attempt would be made to create a satisfactory anamorphic lens. The Simpson technical staff - James Daly, Ed Bickle, Warren Smith, James Curtin - set to the challenge and in a period of six and one-half days they produced VISTARAMA'S first lens. Photographic tests were made by Edwin Olsen, Dudley cameraman, and although the results were not by any measure perfect, the results proved that given time that the VISTARAMA lens could be the equal of any similar anamorphic lens.

Several weeks later, with developed lenses, demon-
strations were held in Los Angeles for the heads of Fox, M-G-M, Warner Bros., Paramount, Republic, Columbia, as well as independent producers and other interested persons. In each instance the results were pronounced impressive and the equal or superior to any other anamorphic lens.

A few days later, in early June of this year, leading 16mm equipment manufacturers were invited to a demonstration screening in Chicago. This, the very first demonstration of an anamorphic wide-screen process for the 16mm field, was held be fore some 300 interested persons at the Conrad Hilton Hotel. The acceptance was real and gratifying and the manufacturers present expressed their enthusiastic desire to design projectors and screens to accommodate the new VISTARAMA dimensional lenses and projected images.

Several days later another demonstration was held at the RKO-86th Street Theatre in New York, courtesy of Mr. Sol Schwartz. Some one hundred fifty persons were invited -