P3D Lenticulars

[John Toeppen <toeppen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I have a copy of Popular Photography from Sept '42 that has an
article on a system called Trivision, invented by one Douglas Winnek.
It consists of a machine to emboss a lenticular pattern onto the film
base,
and a camera which itself moves, and has a moving film plane. The film
is
then processed as a transparency, and becomes a backlit lenticular. The
article mentions the military being very interested, and making aerial
photos and x-rays with the system. Anyone know what became of this?  


Rob Cruickshank      Toronto, Canada 
www.interlog.com/~robcruic
                

The lenticular method was the product of the imagination of Gabriel
Lippman.  Ives later worked with barrier strips.  The lenticular method
was used in WWII for recon imaging.
Because an airplane tracks over an area, the image moves across the film
unless the film is moving.  If the film is moving, the forward looking
perspective is recorded first, and the rear looking perspective is
recorded
last.
If a "lenticular" cylindrical lens array is in the surface of the film,
a series of sequential strip images are recorded under each lens.  When
the film was viewed parallax was apparent.
This effect was known to many.  I am not sure about the "TriVision"
name.  I do know that seven guys started a company to make a camera with
seven lenses to expose on a lenticular film.  They made prototypes,
invested in tooling, set up to manufacture.  Too bad the images were
psuedoscopic.  Ken Fisher and his friends could not figure out a
practical way to fix it.  They reasoned that the required image flip
necessitated going through the lens array again, and the image was
excessively degraded.  
Ken later designed the coiled arm for the Surveyor Mars Lander.
Nimslo found another way.
The lenticular method was also used for some other flat film recording
techniques for color cinema.

John Toeppen
http://home.pacbell.net/toeppen/


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