multi image history

[Richard Allison]

Hello everyone. i am a new member to the forum. i joined the forum to gain information from the membership on the history of the multi image industry from the years 1964-1999. hopefully my end result will be a book and/or a documentary. you can see my project website at https://richard0036.wixsite.com/multi-image-history. My book will be mostly about the equipment and technology but also about the people who made it happen from a more personal point of view. at the moment i am focused on getting as many facts as possible about the company Spindler and Sauppe' , especially the early years of 1955 onward. the cherry in that sundae would be facts about the spindler and sauppe model 730 dissovle that worked with modified SL or SLT selectormatic slide projectors. i would love to hear from anybody who knows anything. thank you very much.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

In the late 1980's, up to about 1995 I used to service a lot of the exhibits at the Museum Of Science and Industry including the Farm exhibit and The Circus Exhibit and the Space Exhibit.... What ever that was.., however only a couple of exhibits that I can remember even used slides. FWIW the Circus and The Farm exhibits both used modified Simplex 35mm projectors running 16mm film and the Space Exhibit used a 35mm Christie.

[Richard Allison]

the late 80's was well into the end of the multi image industry. i remember visiting the Museum of Science and Industry in the early 70's and saw a few of what i learned to be multi image shows. i forget about what as i was focused on the booth and all the wonderful noise that came from it. so i am looking for REALLY old guys who were in the AV industry at its dawn in the mid 60's. anybody out there?

[Scott Norwood]

I love the aesthetics of this medium, although I can't help with the history of it.

Maybe try getting in touch with this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdG...I-efMFSjFDmzvg

He has posted videos of a bunch of 1970s and 1980s multi-image slide shows and some of the programming hardware.

[Richard Allison]

way ahead of you there. i have watched his entire collection and waiting for more. Many of his videos are restorations of richard shipps shows who was one of the greats. i have also been emailing him for a few months in regards of my project. he also has a website dedicated to the history of AVL slide programmer equipment. that website is at http://www.stevenmichelsen.com/AVL/index.html. another great website to look into is that of Douglas Mesney, another one of the greats in the industry. his is at http://www.incredibleimages.com/index.html. on that site is his abbreviated biography and many videos of his multi image shows.

[Martin Brooks]

I used to produce a lot of multi-image shows that used anywhere from 3 to 15 projectors (and one company I worked for did shows with up to 30 projectors), but we used AVL equipment and standard Kodak 35mm projectors. One of the popular things to do at the time for corporate presentations was to animate glowing logos, which was discovered accidentally when someone over-exposed or over-developed some sides. I think I still have an AVL Eagle programming summary card around somewhere. When we first started producing these shows, we used a simple AVL programmer that simply put different pulses on a track of a tape in real time. But the Eagle was basically a computer in which you could do programming using AVL's simple proprietary language. I forget all the details, but as I remember it, you could either put AVL's timecode on the tape which drove the Eagle or you could put pulses on the tape which would drive the dissolvers directly without the Eagle. I don't think we had the Eagle I that's on the site in the above post - we must have had a later model because I don't remember that box sitting behind the keyboard. I did this up until 1986.

[Richard Allison]

The guy who accidentaly invented the glow effect and many other effects was Douglas Mesney of Incredibe slidemakeers. he has an autobiographical website of his work at http://www.incredibleimages.com/Profile.html. he also has a huge autobiography at http://mesney.com/. he is also helping my in a large way on my project., it is true you can run your shows without the eagle by recording the procall code onto the tape to drive your dove dissolves. AVL equipment is well documented and many people who used it are alive and well. however i am finding that people of this industry in the early 60's are gone or too old to talk. i fear that the history of spindler and sauppe may be lost other than suppositions and assumptions.

[Brad Miller]

I've seen a number of these way back in the day and I always found the behind the scenes far more interesting than the actual show. That being said the shows were usually pretty good, but I do specifically remember a 3 screen setup sort of like Cinerama that also ran a 16mm projector on the center screen for parts of the show intermittently. I remember for these shows there were 3 guys, 2 of which were almost constantly changing out slide carousels because the program was chugging through them so fast, and the third guy was running the soundboard and would get up to start and stop the 16mm as needed.

Unfortunately I've no recollection of any useful data for your project as far as company names or people's names who had anything to do with the shows.

[Carsten Kurz]

These shows were pretty popular around europe during the eighties and nineties, mostly showing foreign travel stories. Some college friends bought the equipment and toured with a norway show themselves back then. The same type of program exists nowadays, but being either shown as digital slide shows, or live footage films. Quite successfully, by the way. It was also a real business on trade fairs, the predecessor of image films.

[Gordon McLeod]

I've seen a number of these way back in the day and I always found the behind the scenes far more interesting than the actual show. That being said the shows were usually pretty good, but I do specifically remember a 3 screen setup sort of like Cinerama that also ran a 16mm projector on the center screen for parts of the show intermittently. I remember for these shows there were 3 guys, 2 of which were almost constantly changing out slide carousels because the program was chugging through them so fast, and the third guy was running the soundboard and would get up to start and stop the 16mm as needed.

Unfortunately I've no recollection of any useful data for your project as far as company names or people's names who had anything to do with the shows.

Eastman Kodak produced usually 2 of those per year that they presented as a touring gig to camera clubs around North America. Usually it was 30 Carousel projectors with a Paget Mar300 16mm machine in the middle that was on a pivot table so it could be angled to different parts of the screen. Originally they had 3 loaders a 16mm operator and 2 or 3 guys running a manual dimmer control to control disolve and advance the projectors and then a sound man
Later they used Dove units

[Kenneth Wuepper]

I saw the automated version of the Kodak show here in Saginaw, Michigan.

It was very impressive to see and lots of fun watching all of the machines magically doing their thing.
It came with one person that did the setup and also was the master of ceremonies for the show.
The show ran on a taped sound and cue recording.

[Steven Michelsen]

I used to produce a lot of multi-image shows that used anywhere from 3 to 15 projectors (and one company I worked for did shows with up to 30 projectors), but we used AVL equipment and standard Kodak 35mm projectors. One of the popular things to do at the time for corporate presentations was to animate glowing logos, which was discovered accidentally when someone over-exposed or over-developed some sides. I think I still have an AVL Eagle programming summary card around somewhere. When we first started producing these shows, we used a simple AVL programmer that simply put different pulses on a track of a tape in real time. But the Eagle was basically a computer in which you could do programming using AVL's simple proprietary language. I forget all the details, but as I remember it, you could either put AVL's timecode on the tape which drove the Eagle or you could put pulses on the tape which would drive the dissolvers directly without the Eagle. I don't think we had the Eagle I that's on the site in the above post - we must have had a later model because I don't remember that box sitting behind the keyboard. I did this up until 1986.

Martin,
I suspect you worked with an Eagle II, which is a large one-piece computer with an integrated screen, floppy drive(s) and keyboard. After that came the Genesis, a DOS based PC that came in various shapes and sizes. Then one could buy a "Genesis boardset" which was a card that one could drop into any PC-XT computer.

Anyway I hope folks have been tracking my youtube channel as I have been starting to receive a 2nd cache of shows. This one is made up of shows that were produced by Wilden Enterprises in NYC, who did a lot of work for IBM, and created a lot of generic modules. I will be busy restoring these for the next several months, and capturing and posting as I go through it all. There are a couple of 15 projector candids modules from Wilden posted so far - both IBM events. Please take a look, and please subscribe! There will be more as time goes on... (3) AV Archaeology - YouTube

Best,
Steve
AVL - Audio Visual Laboratories Multi-Image Slide Show Programming Computers (stevenmichelsen.com)

[Dave Macaulay]

IMAX was started by a few Canadian guys who had done multi-image shows for Expo 67. A lot of work went into them, but when the Expo closed... it was all gone forever. Nobody would ever revive it because of the complex setup with many slide projectors plus several motion picture projectors, 35mm and 70mm. The films and slide decks were dumped. I did see a few slides that had been saved from one of the shows.
Then they though of optically printing all the multi image content onto motion picture film, so it could play again without needing to set up the slide equipment. Even the normal 65/70mm frame is too small for this and the idea of using 3x that frame size came up. That idea turned into Multiscreen Corporation, soon to change its name to IMAX.
The problems of making a15 perf 70mm horizontal projector, reel system, and camera could fill a book. They developed the projector themselves near Toronto, the camera was made in California by camera experts using the trusted Mitchell movement design. Illumination was a problem... a 30kW xenon lamphouse designed for a NASA spacecraft solar radiation test cell was somehow found.
They managed to get a sponsor for a pavilion at Expo 70 in Osaka that funded development and the very first 15/70 film, Tiger Child. The show was still site specific with slides etc. so all that survives is the 15/70 material - the dream of portability didn't work out so well there.
Tiger Child is pretty much unwatchable (and entirely incomprehensible), it's almost all multi image with long black sections where other effects (I don't know what, I wasn't at Expo 70) were on the screen. There are a very few full screen images: one ECU of a pregnant persons belly and one medium shot of a guitar player are all I can recall.
The film was done before a projector that worked (and didn't explode into a fog of shredded film) was finished, and even then they only had a small test screen that fit into an industrial mall unit. Before the final assembly in Osaka, only test film was shown if I recall the stories correctly.
When the system went into the pavilion in Japan and the giant screen full frame image from 15/70 film came up... the impact on the viewers was enormous. In days the focus of the company turned to full frame 15/70, and the Multiscreen name did not really go with this new course
. Some 15/70 films still used optical small images optically printed on the negative.
I doubt that actual optical printing is still done. Or if a 15/70 optical bench even exists now.

[Steven Michelsen]

I saw the automated version of the Kodak show here in Saginaw, Michigan.

It was very impressive to see and lots of fun watching all of the machines magically doing their thing.
It came with one person that did the setup and also was the master of ceremonies for the show.
The show ran on a taped sound and cue recording.

Kenneth, I wonder if any of those old Kodak slideshows still exist. I would consider "asking Kodak" but can't imagine where to start. I would love to get them running again on my rig. The challenge with getting a vintage multi image show running, even if you have the parts - the slides, the tape, and the disk with the cues on it, is assembling the room-full of hardware you need to run it. I've got that right here!

AV Archaeology - YouTube

Steve
multi_image_garage.jpg

[Kenneth Wuepper]

Hello Steven,

My contact with Kodak has retired. He was in the imaging department. They worked mostly on color image copiers.

I can only imagine the degree of maintenance that system required.

There was also a 16mm projector in the show I saw.

The Bronner's Christmas Wonderland store in Frankenmuth, Michigan had a custom created 4 slide projector and 16mm show,
It was controlled by a tape recorded sound and cue system.
It is now done digitally with no machines of the previous system remaining.