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Visitors to the New York World's
Fair are getting glimpses of the biggest continuous rolls of
translucent photo reproductions ever made, and their first look
at translucent photos that appear to be prints during daylight
hours and vivid transparencies when backlit at night.
Color Corporation of America
produced 45 king-sized photo tapes for General Foods Corporation
to install in its 11 "Archways to Understanding" at
the Fair. The arches, bearing electronic message boards, flash
a steady flow of news and other useful information. They are
located at high-traffic points throughout the 646-acre Fairgrounds.
Four of the Arches have double-sided panels, with messages visible
from both sides of the structures. The other seven utilize single-sided
panels.
Directly beneath the information panels are mounted three
rectangularly shaped, single-faced photo panels. Behind these
three viewing screens are three rolls of photo tape printed with
a series of scenes relating to the Fair's official theme, "Peace
through Understanding".
The tapes move horizontally on rollers, first left to right
until all frames are shown, and then right to left. The speed
with which each roll of film moves is determined by an automatic
timer operated from a single, central, remote-control console
located in the World's Fair Administration Building.
Each of the tapes measures 66 feet in length. Laid end to
end, all 45 tapes would stretch out to more than half-mile. There
are 10 different scenes on each tape, four in full color and
six in black-and-white. Each scene is six feet long and nearly
three feet high.
Production of the giant tapes proved to be "the toughest
challenge we've faced since our company was organized 14 years
ago," said Joe Snyder, president of the Tampa-based Color
Corporation.
"Printparencies"
The photo tapes are actually
"Printparencies" -- a word coined to describe reproductions
that appear to be prints when viewed in reflected light and transparencies
when seen by transmitted light.
The pictures are printed on Cronar,
DuPont's photo-sensitized polyester material. Best known for
its stability, Cronar also has high tensile strength, important
in this function, where the tapes are pulled back and forth.
In order to unwind completely every 30 minutes, so that viewers
can see all 10 scenes, each 66-foot photo tape moves more than
a quarter of a mile every 12-hour Fair day. All together, the
45 tapes will have logged some 5,000 miles of winding and unwinding
by the time the Fair closes.
Cronar's most attractive quality,
however, from the standpoint of this application, is that it
does a good job of both transmitting and reflecting light, essential
for this display.
Illustrate Fair's Theme
Eight of the 10 scenes on each
tape illustrate the Fair's theme in terms of human experience.
General Foods and its ad agency, Benton & Bowles, scoured
photo libraries and other collections for weeks assembling dramatic
photos on these specific subjects: education, sports, music,
religion, industry, travel, children and the United Nations.
One three-photo sequence, for example, shows a pianist's hands
on a keyboard, trumpeter Louis Armstrong in action and a Salvation
Army band. These scenes represent music as a universal language
for understanding and good will. Two scenes on each tape show
General Foods products. These product shots are on display only
8 1/2 minutes every hour.
Color Corp. worked with a variety
of artwork, including 35mm transparencies. Copy prints were used
for all the black-and-white work.
Special Racks
Handling 70-foot rolls was no
easy task. Special racks to hold the material and special rollers
to advance it were required.
The color images were applied
to the Cronar by the dye transfer method, the first time this
has been done.
Despite the difficulties, Color
Corp. was able to complete the job in a little over three weeks
by working around the clock.
Despite exposure to all sorts
of elements, the pictures are expected to hold up well for the
two years of the Fair.
Information Panels
Mounted above the 31-foot-wide
base of each Arch is a horizontal single or double-sided illuminated
information panel, measuring six feet high by 24 feet wide.
Each of the 15 information panels
(seven singles and four double-sided) has 210 alpha-numeric indicators
arranged in five horizontal lines of 42 lamp banks (and thus,
42 characters) per line. Each indicator consists of a "matrix"
or cluster of incandescent lamps, seven lamps wide by nine lamps
high, which display characters approximately six inches in height.
These characters are legible for 300 feet. All characters from
A-Z and 0-9 can be posted; also a hyphen, apostrophe and a "blank."
Special sunlight filter screens, similar to those used on electric
scoreboards, insure daylight visibility of incandescent figures
and letters.
Copy is transmitted electronically
from the remote-control console in the Administration Building.
This control system employs a
manually-operated "printer," which is operated much
like an electric typewriter. As the operator types on the keyboard,
one copy of the message is produced in normal print, for use
in verifying input. Simultaneously, the message is coded on a
tape, which the operator then feeds into a small "reader"
the size of a shoebox. It is this reader which flashes the message
to the information boards. Messages appear on the boards letter
by letter, left to right, just as they would if hand-written
one line at a time. Posting of the full five lines takes 20 seconds.
As an additional feature of the system, information on the panels
may be moved up one line at a time, so that the top line disappears
and the second line from the bottom becomes line one, and so
on.
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