Hitting the Books: Smaller Cameras and Projectors Helped the Allies Win WWII
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
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. (C) 2020 by the Regents of the University of California.
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