Cinemiracle

Cinemiracle was a widescreen cinema format competing with Cinerama developed in the 1950s. It was ultimately unsuccessful, with only a single film produced and released in the format. Like Cinerama it used 3 cameras to capture a 2.59:1 image. Cinemiracle used two mirrors to give the left and right cameras the same optical center as the middle camera. This made the joins between the projected images much less obvious than with Cinerama. In the early 1950s, the Smith-Dietrich Corporation patented a 2 camera process using a single mirror to combine two conventional 1.33:1 images to produce a seamless 2.66:1 image. National Theatres acquired the rights to the patents and began development of a 3 camera system using the same system. The resulting camera was bulky at 600 lbs (272 kg) - but had a number of interesting features: The film was shot and projected at 26 fps from 6 perforation 35 mm film and sound playback was from a seven track magnetic system with five front channels and two... full article at wikipedia