The Exhibitor (1960)

Cinerama, Inc. announced today the devel¬ opment of a completelj'^ transistorized Cine¬ rama sound system. Nicolas Reisini, president of the company, stated that Dr. D. Hare, head of The Grass Valley Group of California, had developed transistorized units to Cinerama’s requirements that achieve the finest repro¬ duction of sound ever attained. “This revo¬ lutionary new sound system entirely elimi¬ nates vacuum tubes and transformers,” said Mr. Reisini. He also announced that they have placed orders amounting to $2,250,000 for 70 complete Cinerama installations. The new all-transistor sound system ac¬ complishes three main objectives, Mr. Reisini noted: 1) It provides great savings in terms of space and weight over all previous, bulkier sound systems. 2) It reduces to a bare minimum the amount of power loss compared with that ordinarily dissipated in heat by vacuum tubes, while at the same time reducing maintenance and in¬ creasing reliability. 3) The audio quality is vastly improved over previous systems. The new equipment uses no transformers and is capable of han¬ dling high peak power levels without the usual overload characteristics. Mr. Reisini said the development, exclu¬ sively for Cinerama use, means that theater installations costs for the giant screen process will be reduced materially, and the new in¬ stallations will be far superior in terms of maintenance and reliability. The heart of the system, as detailed by Wentworth D. Fling, Cinerama engineering V.P., is the all-transistor power amplifier. The new amplifiers will deliver the same total audio power to the theater speakers (about 450 watts) as was previously realized from the vacuum tube amplifiers. The development of the special transistor circuits for the new Cinerama system has required several years of intensive work and incorporates the many years of experience that Dr. Hare’s group has had in this field. Their efforts in the transistor and allied solid state fields date back to shortly after the invention of the transistor at Bell Laboratories — in fact, the predecessor of the Grass Valley Group, The D.G.C. Hare Company of New Canaan, Connecticut, was awarded one of the first contracts on transis¬ tor circuit development by the Armed Serv¬ ices in 1952. The clarity of sound definition produced with the new process is remarkable, Mr. Fling reported. “The separation of various sources of sound is highly accented, inter¬ modulation distortion is down considerably, and the ability to reproduce transients (sharp sounds) without distortion is much better than in previous efforts.” Commenting on the technical achievements connected with the complete elimination of transformers from the system, Mr. Fling ex¬ plained that even the cross-over networks to the loudspeakers have been eliminated; the high-and-low-frequency speakers are driven by separate amplifiers and cross-over is done electronically in the amplifiers themselves. Cinerama was the first to use magnetic sound in a theater, in 1952. It employs a seven-track sound system; the new system with its improved amplifiers and more highly developed reproducing system goes far be¬ yond current Cinerama sound, acknowledged as the most advanced sound system in the exhibition field. A number of companies worked with Cine¬ rama and The Grass Valley Group in the development of the new system. Special power output transistors, normally the limit¬ ing factor in high power audio systems with wide frequency range, were furnished to par¬ ticular specification by the Semi-Conductor Division of the Motorola Company. Altec Lansing Corporation provided 50 complete sets of speakers without networks (equiva¬ lent to more than 250 normal theater installa¬ tions). Harvey Aluminum Sales of Torrance, California cooperated in the design and pro¬ vided the special extrusions for the power amplifiers. The Westrex Company produced the special sound film transports. Century Projector is building new projector mechan¬ isms for Cinerama installations and the C. S. Ashcraft Company is making special lamphouses and rectifiers for the new projectors to be used in conjimction with the sound system. TESMA Research Aimed At Exhibitor Problems An aggressive technical research program, to be maintained and furthered through the cooperation of all industry technical groups, is about to be launched by Theatre Equip¬ ment and Supply Manufacturers Association, it was announced. To fill the vacuum caused by the dissolu¬ tion of the Motion Picture Research Council, TESMA has determined to work closely with exhibitors and manufacturers, producers’ en¬ gineering staffs, laboratories and others in¬ terested in establishing and maintaining a good screen image and good sound in thea¬ tres. The TESMA project, according to Larry Davee, president, will establish liason be¬ tween all interested groups such as the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, manufacturer’s engineering staffs, etc., to solve everyday technical problems connected directly with the operation of mo¬ tion picture theatres. Davee was authorized by the Tesma Board of Directors at a recent meeting to establish a committee to determine how best to ac¬ complish the ends desired so that any theatre owner then can call upon a disinterested en¬ gineering group to tell him how to solve his technical problems relating to projection and sound. The TESMA resolution establishing the new project was passed at a meeting of the newly elected TESMA Board. ABC Vending Acquires Full Interest in Tri-State ABC Vending Corp. has acquired the re¬ maining fifty per cent interest in TriState Automatic Candy Corp. to make the former affiliate a wholly owned subsidiary, Benja¬ min Sherman, chairman of the board, an¬ nounced today. Purchase price was not dis¬ closed. With headquarters in Buffalo, N. Y., TriState Automatic Candy Corp. is engaged in the concession-vending business principally in New York, Pennsylvania and West Vir¬ ginia. In 1959, Tri-State and its subsidiary had sales of close to 3 million dollars. At seasonal peaks the company has more than 400 em¬ ployees. Melvyn Berman will continue as General Manager of Tri-State, Mr. Sherman an¬ nounced. Mr. Berman was elected a director of ABC in Oct. With headquarters in Long Island City and nationwide facilities, ABC is one of America’s largest concessionaires and operators of auto¬ matic vending machines. In 1959, the company had sales of $66,094,057. A completely transistorized pre-amplifier (left) from Cinerama's new sound system is com¬ pared with the old vacuum tube pre-amplifier with transformers (right). The new unit is 1 /5th the size and weight of the previous unit. In photo at right, all of the transistorized units that go into a complete Cinerama sound sys¬ tem are pointed out by Wentworth D. Fling, Cinerama V.P. for Engineering. He is holding a pre-amplifier card, one of 7 contained in the SV4" panel on the table which replaces the obsolete 6 foot high, 250 pound rack. The panel in this picture contains 7 pre-amplifiers, a monitor amplifier, 3 power supplies and all the metering equipment. On top of the panel is one of the eight transistorized power amplifiers-with-power supply used in the complete sys¬ tem. PE-6 PHYSICAL THEATRE • EXTRA PROFITS DEPARTMENT of MOTION PICTURE EXHIBITOR December 14, I960