Hitting the Books: Smaller cameras and projectors helped the Allies win WWII:
Modern cameras exist in high definition ubiquity — they're in our laptops and phones; strapped onto our helmets and dangling from our drones — heck, you'd be hard pressed to find someone on the street without a video capture-capable device in their pocket these days. In the early era of cinema, however, cameras and projectors were anything but that. Bulky, temperamental and prone to catching fire, early motion picture technology would require decades of innovation to migrate from their gilded movie palaces to American living rooms and classrooms — even the front lines. In Everyday Movies: Portable Film Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture, Haidee Wasson explores this technological evolution and, in the excerpt below, examines the symbiotic (and quite lucrative) relationship between camera makers and the US Department of Defense during the second World War.
Excerpted from Everyday Movies: Portable Film Projectors and the Transformation of American Culture by Haidee Wasson, published by the University of California Press. © 2020 by the Regents of the University of California.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 21 2021, @08:53AM
And lo was born the found footage horror genre.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 21 2021, @01:49PM
https://gizmodo.com/why-the-moon-landings-could-have-never-ever-been-faked-5977205 [gizmodo.com]
Huh - the video seems to have disappeared. The address still exists, but the video is unavailable. https://youtu.be/sGXTF6bs1IU [youtu.be]
Now I wish I had saved it somewhere.
To summarize:
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Thursday January 21 2021, @11:52PM
We've gone from a world where America made technologically advanced cameras that helped win a war, to one in which all of our cameras are imported and we haven't won a war since (aside from the grossly lopsided bully things like Grenada or Panama or such).
(Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Friday January 22 2021, @07:15AM
So massive amounts of military funding led to the technology behind Hollywood becoming a world leader!
Clearly a precedent for what what happened later with computing technology.
If America is going to succeed in the next technology, it is absolutely essential for the government to keep
throwing pork barrels at every problem in sight. Looks like vaccines may turn out better than planned.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @02:22AM
Now have a look at the origins of the CCD. "The CCD was invented in 1969 at Bell Labs by Willard Boyle and George Smith. "
This invention was deliberately put on ice so as not to interfere with analogue photo profits.
Imagine if CCD based consumer photography was available in the early 1980s. The need to transfer and store images from consumer cameras would have kicked the disk drive industry up the butt, and lent more weight to standardizing peripheral connections. Look where greed got us - innovation on hold for decades.
Makes me wonder what copyright and patent laws cost us today.