“Almost like a real web site”
 

IN7OMM.COM
Search | Contact
News | e-News
Rumour Mill | Stories
Foreign Language
Auf Deutsch

WHAT'S ON IN 7OMM?

7OMM FESTIVAL
Karlsruhe | Gentofte
Krnov | Varnsdorf
Banská Bystrica
Oslo | Bradford

TODD-AO PROCESS
Films | Premiere
People | Equipment
Library | Cinemas
Distortion Correcting
DP70 / AAII Projector
 

VISION, SCOPE & RAMA
1926 Natural Vision
1929 Grandeur
1930 Magnifilm
1930 Realife
1930 Vitascope
1952 Cinerama
1953 CinemaScope
1953 Panavison
1954 VistaVision
1955 Todd-AO
1955 Circle Vision 360
1956 CinemaScope 55
1957 Ultra Panavision 70
1958 Cinemiracle
1958 Kinopanorama
1959 Super Panavision 70
1959 Super Technirama 70
1960 Smell-O-Vision
1961 Sovscope 70
1962
Cinerama 360
1962 MCS-70
1963 70mm Blow Up
1963 Circarama
1963 Circlorama
1966 Dimension 150
1966
Stereo-70
1967 DEFA 70
1967 Pik-A-Movie
1970 IMAX / Omnimax
1974 Cinema 180
1974 SENSURROUND
1976 Dolby Stereo
1984 Showscan
1984 Swissorama
1986 iWERKS
1989 ARRI 765
1990 CDS
1994 DTS / Datasat
2001 Super Dimension 70
2018 Magellan 65

Various Large format | 70mm to 3-strip | 3-strip to 70mm | Specialty Large Format | Special Effects in 65mm | ARC-120 | Early Large Format
7OMM Premiere in Chronological Order

7OMM ON EARTH

Australia | Brazil | Canada | China | Denmark | England | France | Germany | Holland | India | Iran | Israel | Ireland | Mexico | Norway | Poland |  Russia | Spain | Sweden | Turkey | USA |

LIBRARY
7OMM Projectors
People | Eulogy
65mm/70mm Workshop
The 7OMM Newsletter
Back issue | PDF
Academy of the WSW

7OMM NEWS
• 2026 | 2025 | 2024
2023 | 2022 | 2021
2020 | 2019 | 2018
2017 | 2016 | 2015
2014 | 2013 | 2012
2011 | 2010 | 2009
2008 | 2007 | 2006
2005 | 2004 | 2003
2002 | 2001 | 2000
1999 | 1998 | 1997
1996 | 1995 | 1994
 

in70mm.com Mission:
• To record the history of the large format movies and the 70mm cinemas as remembered by the people who worked with the films. Both during making and during running the films in projection rooms and as the audience, looking at the curved screen.
in70mm.com, a unique internet based magazine, with articles about 70mm cinemas, 70mm people, 70mm films, 70mm sound, 70mm film credits, 70mm history and 70mm technology. Readers and fans of 70mm are always welcome to contribute.

Disclaimer | Updates
Support us | Staff
Testimonials
Table of Content
 

 
 
Extracts and longer parts of in70mm.com may be reprinted with the written permission from the editor.
Copyright © 1800 - 2070. All rights reserved.

Visit biografmuseet.dk about Danish cinemas

 

Walter P. Siegmund
Brief Bio - 1925 - 2012

Read more at
in70mm.com
The 70mm Newsletter
Written by: Walter P. Siegmund Date: 03.10.2008
Walter Siegmund (left) and Gilbert Clotar posing for the Bug Eye lens next to the Baush and Lomb building at the University of Rochester. Note camera shadow next to Gil. Image thanks to Walter Siegmund.

I was born in Bremen, Germany in 1925 and had one older brother and no sisters. My father left Germany in 1929 to find work in America and the rest of us left for New York just after my fifth birthday. We arrived on September 13, 1930 and left immediately for Rochester, New York.

Rochester had a large German-American population, was a center for optical manufacturing and the home of Eastman Kodak Co. I went to public school and upon graduation from high school entered the University of Rochester for the course in optics.

A fellow (female) student entered in our "homeroom" attracted my attention (we were seated about 5 meters apart) and when we both took the optics course at the university, we started dating and fell in love at 17! We have been married for 58 years!

I served in the US Navy for 13 months and then returned to the University of Rochester for my graduate work. In 1952 after receiving my PhD, I went to work for Dr. Brian O'Brien on a problem in vision. Near the end of 1952 he asked me to join him as an assistant in his new position as Vice President for Research at American Optical in Southbridge, Massachusetts. I said yes.

Our first project was to develop a new motion picture system which, as Mike Todd put it, "Cinerama out of one hole". This was a "crash" program for an old-fashioned company like American Optical and eventually nearly 100 engineers and technicians were involved.
 
More in 70mm reading:

Walter Siegmund Interview

Garrett Brown meets Walter Siegmund at American Optical

4. Todd-AO 70mm-Festival 2008

 
Most of the attendees here know all they want to know about Todd-AO but I may be able to still tell a few more "secrets".

After the special optical corrective printing process was set aside I returned to the Research Laboratory at AO to take up a new assignment, the development of another of Dr. O'Brien's inventions, "Fiber Optics". The story of this development has many facets and has led to incredible new technologies achieved by laboratories all over the world.

My role at American Optical was to lead up to the R & D program which lead to improved night vision devices, flexible imaging cables for space optics and military applications, fiber optic endoscopes, fiber optic magnifiers and medical x-ray imaging components.

One of the last programs I worked on was a remarkable flight simulator for the F-16 Air Force fighter aircraft. Upon retirement from the German firm Schott Glass headquartered in Mainz, who had purchased the fiber optics operation in 1986, I went into business with a partner developing and manufacturing fiber optic magnifiers for persons with macular degeneration. These were the best of their type ever produced!.

Finally, when we were unable to create a strong market for these magnifiers in the U.S. (but had excellent reception in Germany, Holland and Japan), we ceased production at the end of 1999. Immediately thereafter I set up a new corporation to produce so called "capillary arrays" for neutron imaging devices primarily for the French Atomic Energy Commission. The basic program for which these were required was the production of energy by controlled fusion, the ultimate source energy in the universe! To the best of my knowledge, I was the only one in the world producing these arrays! (in my barn behind our house).

When we moved to a new house the entire process was transferred to a small company in Massachusetts and the barn is now filled with horses!
 
 
   
Go: back - top - back issues - news index
Updated 28-07-24