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A special lens compressed a wide image so it fitted on standard stock. The figure is taken from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.

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Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.

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CinemaScope squeezed widescreen onto ordinary film

A special lens compressed a wide image so it fitted on standard stock CinemaScope, introduced by 20th Century Fox in 1953 with The Robe, used an anamorphic lens to squeeze a wide picture onto standard 35mm film. A matching lens on the projector stretched it back out. The system gave cinemas a spectacle television could not match, and the 2.35 to 1 frame became a widescreen staple. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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More facts like this

Cinerama joined three projectors into one pictureEach machine filled a third of a deep curved screen and the seams were blended American colour television was standardised in 1953The FCC approved a compatible system that black-and-white sets could still receive Everest was first climbed in 1953Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on 29 May An IMAX frame is about ten times largerThe format runs film sideways through the camera at 15 perforations a frame Citizen Kane kept foreground and background both sharpCinematographer Gregg Toland used fast wide-angle lenses and heavy lighting The Academy ratio ruled screens until the 1950sA frame of about 1.37 to 1 was the standard shape of cinema for two decades

Tags: widescreen, 1953, lenses

CinemaScope squeezed widescreen onto ordinary film: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?: A special lens compressed a wide image so it fitted on standard stock. The figure is taken from Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a movies & tv fact?: Yes. It sits on the Movies & TV shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?: The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.