P3D Re: Lenticulars: How Old?

[abram klooswyk <abram.klooswyk@xxxxxx>]

Gary Schacker asked (P3D Digest 3267, 29 Mar 1999):
>Someone who is writing an article on 3D has asked me when lenticular
>prints first appeared.

Mauro Barbieri answered (P3D Digest 3268, 31 Mar 1999):
>On the Graphic Encyclopedia by "Arti Poligrafiche Europee"
>I found that the first who spoke about the lenticular system 
>was C. Kanolt from Washington in a 1912 patent.

Asking for "firsts" often results in debates you regret afterwards. 

In several printed sources I find that the quoted patent was from
1918, US Patent 1.260,682 by C.W. Kanolt. Some say 1915/1918,
1915 might be the year of filing, 1912 seems wrong however.
New in Kanolt's patent seems to have been the use of _multiple_ 
strips behind each lens cylinder (like the 4 strips of Nimslo), but 
earlier lenticulars had been proposed for two views, I have seen 
a German paper from 1914 by Hess in which a cylindric lenses array 
is mentioned to see two views.
(W.R. Hess, "Direkt wirkende Stereoskopbilder", Zeitschrift fuer 
wissenschaftliche Photographie usw., Band XIV Heft 2 pp 33-38, 1914).
 
Even before him G. Lippmann had proposed "integral photography" in a 
French article from 1908 in which he said that a large array of
small lenses (or pinholes) could be used. 
This were not _cylindric_ lenses, but "lenticular" could of course
mean to include his field of tiny lenses.

All these system with small lenses were based on earlier work with
opaque parallax barriers, the names of J.Jacobson (US patents 1899),
Fr.I.Ives (1902-1904), E. Estanave (patents 1906-1910) are connected
with these trials, but the first to have proposed an autostereoscopic
system seems to have been A. Berthier from France, in a 1896 article.

These parallax barrier system uses a "grid selector" principle which
had been used before by painters from the 17th century. They used
grids of vertical laths to show on of two (or even three) views. 
(This principle sometimes is used even today for text or images 
outside shops).

Now mentioning the names connected to all those early systems has
in fact limited significance, for most systems had drawbacks or
were unpractical. Remember that clear plastics usable for 
lenticular sheets are less than 50 years available. 
So "when lenticular prints first appeared" is probably how you
define it.

Abram Klooswyk


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End of PHOTO-3D Digest 3280
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