Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (1950-1954)

Fig. 2. 16mm shipboard booth installation (Official Photograph, U.S. Navy). speakers and the screen with frame are completely dismantled and stowed away in assigned spaces until the following evening. During bad weather, projectors used generally for training purposes, the 5-w unit previously mentioned, or even the 20-w booth equipment can be taken into the wardroom, the crew's mess, or any other interior space and a reasonably good show given. Projection below deck involves problems of steel bulkheads, decks, overheads, and so forth, which may result in some reverberation. The size of the audience is depended upon to deaden the sound. During inside shows dual operation of the projection equipments is not usually feasible in view of the fact that spaces are too small to hold the entire audience at one time. Therefore, shows are held simultaneously in several different compartments. Each show cannot start at the same time since reels must be passed from one projection area to the other. A third type of installation would be that on an aircraft carrier, where extremely bad acoustical conditions result in a completely different approach to sound problems. The show, first of all, is presented in one of the hangar areas, normally used for the stowage and repair of aircraft. In some ships such an area is approximately 100 ft in width, 180 ft in length and 18 ft in height. The booth is mounted just below the overhead at one end of the area and projection is toward one of the hangar bay doors on which an 18-ft lace and grommet screen is mounted. A typical motion-picture hangar is shown in Fig. 5. Projection distances of approximately 170 ft are average in our largest carriers. The projection booth is about the same as that on a battleship or cruiser — about Cowett: Shipboard 16mm Installations 11