Todd-AO Southbridge's Role in the Movies - First in a Series.

On late night television, the viewer may notice at the beginning of the credits of the scratched movie classic, the words TODD-AO. AO, American Optical?

In the mid-50s, Hollywood came to Southbridge in the person of movie entrepreneur Mike Todd. Todd wanted to make his mark on Tinsel Town, and he wanted America's top optical firm to help him.

Using some 100 of the sprawling Southbridge plant's scientists, researchers and technicians, Dr. Brian O'Brien, one of America's foremost optic experts, supervised the creation of a new movie process: TODD-AO.

On Oct. 10, 1955 - 30 years ago - that process premiered with the showing of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" This is the story of Southbridge's role in the movies.

The concept of motion pictures was introduced by Thomas Alva Edison with his invention of the Kinetoscope on April 14, 1894. A coin was placed in a slot and for 15 seconds you could peep at a series of moving pictures that gave a startling impression that objects were truly moving. It was not long before these pictures were projected onto a screen and the first motion picture house built.

In spite of the advances in the art of motion pictures with their plush theatres the presentation was just that - a picture - a flat picture that gave the illusion of motion. About 1950 television began to make its presence known and the motion picture industry was forced to improve its act.

One of the first real advances was made independently by Fred Waller. Waller had developed a gunnery training simulator at Oyster Bay on Long Island during World War II. Three projectors covered a wide spherical screen with images of aircraft. A gunner sitting in a cubicle had a remarkably real feeling of three dimensions as the planes zoomed in to attack him and he fired back.

In the autumn of 1952 Waller came out with Cinerama, a new motion picture process, based on his gunnery simulator. The system started with three cameras - instead one - photographing a scene.

The projection system was similar but the screen was deeply curved.

There were seven stereophonic sound tracks. The sound was synchronized with the cameras and was played back from several different loudspeakers. If there were a train on the right side of the screen, the sound of the train came from this same place. The effect of realism, the effect of being immersed in the action was startlingly real.

A roller coaster scene became famous as the audiences screamed when the car climbed slowly to the top than plunged down. It was Michael Todd, incidentally, who was responsible for this scene and others like it that took Cinerama out of the laboratory and made it the success it later became.

The next attempt at audience immersion came later in the fall of 1952 with Natural Vision, better known as "3D." While it did not require three cameras or projectors, it did require that the audience wear special glasses with different polarizations for the right and left eye.

For those with only one good eye, there was no three dimensional effect but for those with two good eyes the effects were highly successful.

Audiences, however, did not like to wear the special glasses and the system was never really successful.

Cinerama, however, was accepted by audiences although there were some major technical problems. The principal one was that a straight line, such as a rooftop, might show a disconcerting vertical jump as it passed from one camera to another. It was never really possible to get the projectors aligned horizontally resulting in overlap. This overlap produced a distinctly fuzzy vertical seam.

Cinerama, however, was the jumping off place for a new system - Todd-AO.