Projection screens. They’re something we all take for granted. These days, projection screen manufacture is a high-tech business, with cinemas boasting screens coated with anything from aluminium to tiny reflective beads. But what was it like in the old days?
Easy enough to find the answer, you might think. Just ask Google, right? Wrong. While researching the subject for a personal project about the cinema in the 1920s, I found little of any use. So, I turned my attention to the Media History Digital Library, a free repository “featuring millions of pages of books and magazine from the histories of film, broadcasting and recorded sound.” If you have any interest in the history of cinema, you won’t find a shinier treasure trove than this.
I started with the annals of the New York-based Society of Motion Picture Engineers. Founded in 1916, The Society brought together technical experts from the fields of research and engineering, plus motion picture manufacturing and production executives. Every year it held two conventions, each lasting around four days, where a wide range of papers was presented and discussed, and new equipment demonstrated.
At the meeting of October 8-9, 1917, R. P. Burrows gave an address entitled Light Intensities for Motion Picture Projection, presented in the journal by J. T. Cardwell. Burrows identified two classes of projection screen then in common usage: diffuse reflecting screens and spread reflecting screens:
Of the first class, white cloth screens and plaster screens are typical. A white cloth screen when clean can be made to reflect as high as 70 to 75% of the light which strikes it; and a plaster screen 80 to 88% … Such screens are well adapted to theatres in which the position of the seats with respect to the screen is such that the picture must be viewed at relatively large angles.
Aluminized screens and ground-mirror screens are examples of the spread reflecting class. A clean aluminized screen can be designed to reflect about 60 to 65% of the light striking it and will confine the reflect light within an angle of approximately 30°. Ground-mirror screens when clean can be made to reflect approximately 80 to 90% of the light … Such screens are well adapted to theatres in which the seats are so arranged that the picture does not have to be viewed at large angles.
This extract alone told me pretty much everything I needed to know – in the early days of cinema, your basic projection screen was probably just a smooth plaster wall or a hanging piece of stretched muslin. However, 1916 was a little early for the requirements of my project.
Fast-forwarding ten years to 1926, I found this report from the Society’s Progress Committee rounding up some of the latest advances in screen technology, culled from such publications as Photographische Weekly and Kinematographic Weekly:
An unusual motion picture screen described in a German publication consists of a surface composed of colored strips continuously moved by two cylinders. Pictures projected on to this screen are said to be more intense in daylight than pictures projected on an ordinary screen in a darkened room. An artificial cloud or mist produced by a spray has been used as a projection screen for the projection of motion pictures in a Berlin park. Another screen developed by an English inventor is made of mottled opal glass. It is built in sections which fit together, leaving the cracks invisible to the observer. The screen is permanent and washable.
All very interesting, but far too experimental for my taste. Setting the report aside, I delved into the individual conference presentations from October 1926 and came up with this note about another report, this time from Moving Picture World magazine:
If a surface of magnesium carbonate prepared in the laboratory is taken as one hundred per cent white, then the reflecting power of plaster, cloth and beaded surfaces are about 80, 60 and 78 per cent, respectively. The specially prepared specular screens which concentrate the reflected light along the axis may show a value of perhaps four hundred per cent when viewed normally.
This was enough for my particular needs. A decade on from 1916 and you’re still looking at two basic choices for your projection screen: good old cloth or plaster or, if you really wanted to push the boat out, you could indulge in a fancy specular affair of the type that spawned the phrase “silver screen.”
At the same time, there were plenty of technologists on a quest to improve projection screen performance to new heights. The table shown below formed part of an address given in 1926 by Loyd A. Jones and Clifton Tuttle, entitled Reflection Characteristics of Projection Screens:
Tuttle worked at Eastman Kodak’s research laboratory, and the presentation brought together data he’d gathered with his colleague Milton F. Fillius, based on tests conducted on forty different projection screens from various manufacturers. I won’t go into the results here – they’re extensive and highly technical – but if nothing else the dizzying extent of their list proves one thing: there sure were one heck of a lot of companies competing to convince theatre owners that their particular product – whatever it was made from – was the best darn projection screen in Hollywood.
This article was first published in slightly different form at graham-edwards.com
Graham Edwards 