Frederic Waller (1886 – May 18, 1954) was an American inventor and film pioneer.
Career
Waller is most known for his contributions to film special effects while working at
Paramount Pictures, for his creation of the Waller Flexible Gunnery Trainer,[2] and for inventing
Cinerama,[3] the immersive experience of a curved film screen that extends to the viewer's peripheral vision for which he received an Academy Award. Waller, a snow skiing and boating enthusiast, is also credited with obtaining the first patent for a
water ski in 1925.[4] He produced and directed 200 one-reel shorts for Paramount, including Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho and Duke Ellington's Symphony in Black. He patented several pieces of photographic equipment, including a camera that could take a 360-degree still photo. As the special projects director for the
1939 New York World's Fair, he collaborated on the fair centerpiece attraction called the
Perisphere, the Eastman Kodak Hall of Color, and he developed the Time and Space Building to showcase his creation, Vitarama an 11-projector system projecting onto a half dome sphere and precursor to Cinerama.[5] During World War II the Vitarama Corporation (and Fred Waller) produced a five projector aerial gunnery trainer used by the armed forces. It saved an estimated 350,000 casualties during the during the war.[6][citation needed]
U.S. patent 2,503,083: Apparatus for controlling picture displays from sound records (filed Feb 15, 1947, issued Apr 4, 1950)
U.S. patent 2,476,521: Screen for picture projections (filed Sep 22, 1947, issued Jul 19, 1949)
U.S. patent 2,664,780: Method of photographically correcting the photographic images of objects (filed Feb 4, 1948, issued Jan 5, 1954)
U.S. patent 2,583,030: Parallax correction for multilens cameras (filed Oct 9, 1948, issued Jan 22, 1952)
U.S. patent 2,563,893: Apparatus for holding and guiding a chain of slides for successive display (filed Nov 17, 1948, issued Aug 14, 1951)
U.S. patent 2,682,722: Linked holder for lantern slides (filed Dec 4, 1948, issued Jul 6, 1954)
U.S. patent 2,664,781: Photographic apparatus for correcting negatives during printing thereof (filed Sep 30, 1949, issued Jan 5, 1954)
U.S. patent 2,705,439: Slide projector with sloping magazine and slide carrier for withdrawing the lowermost slide from the magazine (filed Feb 20, 1951, issued Apr 5, 1955)
Awards
Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers Progress Medal (1953)[7]
Carey, Charles W. (1999) "American Inventors, Entrepreneurs, and Business Visionaries". Facts on File Library of American History
ISBN0-8160-8146-8.
Koszarski, Richard. (2008) "Hollywood On the Hudson: Film and Television in New York from Griffith to Sarnoff". Rutgers University Press
ISBN0-8135-4293-6.