Fred Waller
Frederic Waller (1886 – May 18, 1954) was an American inventor and film pioneer. Career Waller is most known for his contributions to film special effects while working at Paramount Pictures, for his creation of the Waller Flexible Gunnery Trainer, and for inventing Cinerama, the immersive experience of a curved film screen that extends to the viewer's peripheral vision for which he received an Academy Award. Waller, a snow skiing and boating enthusiast, is also credited with obtaining the first patent for a water ski in 1925. He produced and directed 200 one-reel shorts for Paramount, including '' Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho'' and Duke Ellington's '' Symphony in Black''. He patented several pieces of photographic equipment, including a camera that could take a 360-degree still photo. As the special projects director for the 1939 New York World's Fair, he collaborated on the fair centerpiece attraction called the Perisphere, the Eastman Kodak Hall of Color, and he developed the Ti ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, behind New York County (Manhattan). Brooklyn is also New York City's most populous borough,2010 Gazetteer for New York State United States Census Bureau. Retrieved September 18, 2016. with 2,736,074 residents in 2020. Named after the Dutch village of Breukelen, Brooklyn is located on the western portion of Long Island and shares a border with the borough of Queens. It has several bridge and tunnel connections to the borough of [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1939 New York World's Fair
The 1939–40 New York World's Fair was a world's fair held at Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York, United States. It was the second-most expensive American world's fair of all time, exceeded only by St. Louis's Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904. Many countries around the world participated in it, and over 44 million people attended its exhibits in two seasons. It was the first exposition to be based on the future, with an opening slogan of "Dawn of a New Day", and it allowed all visitors to take a look at "the world of tomorrow". When World War II began four months into the 1939 World's Fair, many exhibits were affected, especially those on display in the pavilions of countries under Axis occupation. After the close of the fair in 1940, many exhibits were demolished or removed, though some buildings were retained for the 1964–1965 New York World's Fair, held at the same site. Planning In 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, a group of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Polytechnic Institute Of New York University Alumni
Polytechnic is most commonly used to refer to schools, colleges, or universities that qualify as an institute of technology or vocational university also sometimes called universities of applied sciences. Polytechnic may also refer to: Education Tertiary education * Bahrain Polytechnic, in Isa Town * Polytechnic (Greece), schools that teach engineering * Polytechnic (Portugal), schools that offer practical training, profession-oriented * Polytechnic School (France), Paris * Polytechnic University (New York), New York University Tandon School of Engineering * Polytechnic (United Kingdom), a type of tertiary education teaching institution in the UK between 1965 and 1992 * Polytechnic (Singapore), tertiary institutions in Singapore * Jakarta State Polytechnic, Indonesia * Tokyo Polytechnic University, Japan * Hong Kong Polytechnic University (may be abbreviated as PolyU) * Polytechnic University of Catalonia, or BarcelonaTech, Spain * Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1954 Deaths
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations. * January 21 – The first nuclear-pow ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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1886 Births
Events January–March * January 1 – Upper Burma is formally annexed to British Burma, following its conquest in the Third Anglo-Burmese War of November 1885. * January 5– 9 – Robert Louis Stevenson's novella '' Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'' is published in New York and London. * January 16 – A resolution is passed in the German Parliament to condemn the Prussian deportations, the politically motivated mass expulsion of ethnic Poles and Jews from Prussia, initiated by Otto von Bismarck. * January 18 – Modern field hockey is born with the formation of The Hockey Association in England. * January 29 – Karl Benz patents the first successful gasoline-driven automobile, the Benz Patent-Motorwagen (built in 1885). * February 6– 9 – Seattle riot of 1886: Anti-Chinese sentiments result in riots in Seattle, Washington. * February 8 – The West End Riots following a popular meeting in Trafalgar Square, Lo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS, often pronounced ; also known as simply the Academy or the Motion Picture Academy) is a professional honorary organization with the stated goal of advancing the arts and sciences of motion pictures. The Academy's corporate management and general policies are overseen by a board of governors, which includes representatives from each of the craft branches. As of April 2020, the organization was estimated to consist of around 9,921 motion picture professionals. The Academy is an international organization and membership is open to qualified filmmakers around the world. The Academy is known around the world for its annual Academy Awards, now officially and popularly known as "The Oscars". In addition, the Academy holds the Governors Awards annually for lifetime achievement in film; presents Scientific and Technical Awards annually; gives Student Academy Awards annually to filmmakers at the undergraduate and graduate level; ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Perisphere
The Trylon and Perisphere were two monumental modernistic structures designed by architects Wallace Harrison and J. Andre Fouilhoux that were together known as the Theme Center of the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Perisphere was a tremendous sphere, in diameter, connected to the spire-shaped Trylon by what was at the time the world's longest escalator. The Perisphere housed a diorama by Henry Dreyfuss called ''Democracity'' which, in keeping with the fair's theme "The World of Tomorrow", depicted a utopian city-of-the-future. The interior display was viewed from above on a moving sidewalk, while a multi-image slide presentation was projected on the dome of the sphere. After exiting the Perisphere, visitors descended to ground level on the third element of the Theme Center, the Helicline, a spiral ramp that partially encircled the Perisphere. The name "Perisphere" was coined using the Greek prefix ''peri-'', meaning "all around", "about", or "enclosing". The name "Trylon" was ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Symphony In Black
''Symphony in Black: A Rhapsody of Negro Life'' is a -minute musical short produced in 1935 that features Duke Ellington’s early extended piece, "A Rhapsody of Negro Life". The film, Billie Holiday’s screen debut, was directed by Fred Waller and distributed by Paramount Pictures. ''Symphony in Black'' represents a landmark in musical, cultural, and entertainment history as well as significant progress in Ellington’s own biography. It is a member of the first generation of non-classically arranged orchestral scores and perhaps most importantly, one of the first films written by an African American describing African American life to reach wide distribution. Background ''Symphony in Black'' depicts black life in America and the composition itself (''A Rhapsody of Negro Life'') is divided into four parts: “The Laborers,” “A Triangle”, “A Hymn of Sorrow” and “Harlem Rhythm”. “A Triangle” features the vocals by Holiday and solos by jazz clarinetist and tenor s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York (state)
New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. state by area. With 20.2 million people, it is the fourth-most-populous state in the United States as of 2021, with approximately 44% living in New York City, including 25% of the state's population within Brooklyn and Queens, and another 15% on the remainder of Long Island, the most populous island in the United States. The state is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east; it has a maritime border with Rhode Island, east of Long Island, as well as an international border with the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the north and Ontario to the northwest. New York City (NYC) is the most populous city in the United States, and around two-thirds of the state's populat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho
''Cab Calloway's Hi-De-Ho'' (also known as ''Hi-De-Ho'') is an American musical short film directed by Fred Waller and released by Paramount Pictures in 1934. The film stars jazz bandleader Cab Calloway and actress Fredi Washington. In 2001, the film was reissued by Kino International in the DVD collection ''Hollywood Rhythm: Vol. 1-The Best Of Jazz And Blues''. Synopsis Bandleader Cab Calloway plays a ladies man who dates the wife (Fredi Washington) of a train porter who is frequently absent from home. Calloway and his Orchestra perform "Zaz-zuh-zaz" and "The Lady with the Fan" at the Cotton Club in Harlem Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harl .... Cast * Cab Calloway and his Orchestra * Fredi Washington Notable orchestra members in the film * Edwin Swayzee – ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |