Fred Waller


Frederic Waller 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, and for inventing Cinerama, 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. 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. During World War II, the Vitarama Corporation produced a five-projector aerial gunnery trainer used by the armed forces. It saved an estimated 350,000 casualties during the war.

Patents

  • : Aquaplane
  • : Anemometer
  • : Apparatus for taking sounds
  • : Screen for picture projection
  • : Gunnery training apparatus
  • : Control band for gunnery training apparatus
  • : Electrically illuminated display apparatus
  • : Desiccator
  • : Apparatus for controlling picture displays from sound records
  • : Screen for picture projections
  • : Method of photographically correcting the photographic images of objects
  • : Parallax correction for multilens cameras
  • : Apparatus for holding and guiding a chain of slides for successive display
  • : Linked holder for lantern slides
  • : Photographic apparatus for correcting negatives during printing thereof
  • : Slide projector with sloping magazine and slide carrier for withdrawing the lowermost slide from the magazine

    Awards

  • Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers Progress Medal
  • Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scientific or Technical Award