Bill Ewald's talk

[P3D <rdi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I went to the Bill Ewald talk at the Brighton Town Hall here in Rochester, NY that
Bill Davis mentioned here in the list.
It was *great*!  Bill E. was a great speaker (sorry I missed him at the convention
last year).  He worked in the Kodak experimental product development department
back in the mid-50s, and brought some stored-in-the-basement
goodies, including the prototype Kodak Realist format projector (which Bill D. 
described a few weeks ago- it swings the polarizers out of the way for the initial
display of each slide so you an align/adjust images up/down/sideways using
a joystick, then hit a button to pop the polarizers into place to
regain 3D).  He had overheads of his patent drawings for it, which were REALLY neat
to see.  This prototype looks GREAT- Bill E. must have had full use
of a professional model shop to do such a great job on it- it looks production
quality.  Bill D. has done a great job cleaning it up/fixing it.
Bill E. also brought a Kodak camera with a working *rangefinder focus* in it-
again, production quality (including lithographed artwork "Kodak Rangefinder"), 
and an interesting camera that looked like a macro 35mm camera (2 tiny, close 
lenses).  BUT it was intended for NORMAL 3D photography because he had a 
matching Carousel projector with modified lens that would project these single 
35mm 8 perf 2x2 slides.  The projector lens and condenser were modified to have 2 
small independent lenses, matching the camera that took the slides.  It worked 
AMAZINGLY well.  Bill E. also brought some other stuff; a vectograph, an old 
lenticular which had (accidental) motion captured- ducklings tottering around and tree
branches moving; he explained that happened because of the camera method used- 
a single camera he invented ker-chunked it's way across to take many photos, 
and stuff moved in the interim.
He did a flip-glasses-upsidedown demo of pseudo stereo which was great-
I've never really been able to percive pseudo very well before, but his
subject was a stone carving, and worked wonderfully.
He described his prototype Kodak table viewer (no glasses needed), but indicated the 
George Eastman House has it in their collection, and won't let him touch or 
borrow it- I think we need to start a letter writing campaign!  Ah, 
maybe not... If they find out Bill has this goldmine of other stuff,
they'll raid his basement! :-)

There also were some old co-workers and associates of Bill E. in the crowd 
(some famous 3D guys whose names escape me) that added to the discussions.

There were many 3D "guests" there; I think us 3D guys equaled or surpassed the 
original attendance of the historic photo society!  I met some new faces there.
It seems there's a somewhat large contingent in Webster, NY (at least 4 of us).

I witnessed as another viewer lost the battle to Bill D.'s nose.  What's the 
score now?  Bill's nose: 5   Realist-format viewers: 0?       :-) :-) :-)

Dick Twitchell 3D videotaped the whole thing; maybe it'll be in mini-IMAX theatres
next year?  :-)

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Rick Inzero                                     
Northern Telecom, Inc.                          
Rochester, NY                                   rdi@xxxxxxx

I free-view lenticulars for a 6-D effect!!


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