Mondo Knows Facts
Seventy millimetre prints carried magnetic sound
Strips of iron oxide were glued to the edges to hold six audio tracks For 70mm presentations, laboratories laminated magnetic stripes onto the release print, giving up to six channels of sound. The projector read them with magnetic heads instead of a light beam. The format gave roadshow screenings far wider sound than 35mm optical tracks could. It sits in Mondo's movies & tv collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
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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
Optical sound is printed beside the pictureA wavering line of light and dark runs down the edge of every frameFilm stock was slit from 70mm rollsEastman Kodak cut Edison's wide roll in half to make the standard gaugeAn IMAX frame is about ten times largerThe format runs film sideways through the camera at 15 perforations a frameSafety film replaced nitrate in the 1950sAcetate stock burned slowly, though it decayed into vinegar over timeSome films are shot with three perforations a frameUsing less film per frame cuts stock costs and allows longer takesKodak's 16mm film was launched for amateursKodak launched the smaller gauge in 1923 for hobbyists and schools
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Tags: sound, film-formats, 70mm
Seventy millimetre prints carried magnetic sound: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Strips of iron oxide were glued to the edges to hold six audio tracks. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, 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.