IMAX

Lore & Background

The company originally called Multiscreen Corporation changed its name to IMAX after an attorney advised that 'Multiscreen' was too generic to trademark. Co-founder Graeme Ferguson recounted that the name was devised during a lunch at a Hungarian restaurant in Montreal, written on a placemat. A key patent filed on January 16, 1970, was still assigned under the original name Multiscreen Corporation, Limited. The single-projector/single-camera system was designed and built by William C. Shaw based on a 'Rolling Loop' film-transport technology purchased from Peter Ronald Wright Jones of Brisbane, Australia. This technology was necessary because IMAX film uses fifteen perforations per frame, requiring a mechanism to handle the intermittent movement of the film strip.

The first IMAX film, Tiger Child, was demonstrated at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan. The first permanent IMAX installation opened in May 1971 at the Cinesphere theatre at Ontario Place in Toronto, showing the film North of Superior. During Expo '74 in Spokane, Washington, an IMAX screen measuring 27×20 meters (89×66 ft) was featured in the US Pavilion, then the largest movie screen in the world. About five million visitors viewed the short film Man Belongs to the Earth, and some experienced motion sickness due to the screen covering the viewer's total visual field. The first permanent IMAX Dome installation opened in 1974 at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater in San Diego, California, and the first permanent IMAX 3D theatre was built in Vancouver for Transitions at Expo '86.

Reader's Guide

IMAX's significance lies in its pioneering of a large-format cinema experience that prioritized image resolution and immersive viewing. The IMAX 15/70 film format uses 65 mm film stock running horizontally through the camera, 15 perforations at a time, achieving three times the theoretical horizontal resolution of 35 mm film. The Grand Theater (GT) format can show 1.43:1 content on a screen large enough to fill almost all of the audience's vision. However, the high construction and maintenance costs of dedicated IMAX buildings and projectors initially limited installations to short documentaries. To expand into existing theaters, IMAX introduced the SR system in 1998 and the MPX system in 2004, followed by digital systems in 2008 (IMAX Digital 2K) and 2014 (IMAX with Laser 4K). The switch to digital projection, while enabling growth from 300 screens in 2007 to over 1,300 by 2017, came with a steep cost in image quality, as 2K projectors have roughly an order of magnitude less resolution than traditional IMAX film projectors. This led to the derogatory term 'LieMAX' for newer, smaller-screen installations marketed similarly to the original large-format experience. By late 2017, less than a quarter of IMAX systems could show 70 mm film at the original large-format resolution.

Did You Know?

• The name IMAX was invented during a lunch at a Hungarian restaurant in Montreal and written on a placemat.
• The first IMAX film, Tiger Child, was demonstrated at Expo '70 in Osaka, Japan.
• The first permanent IMAX installation, the Cinesphere at Ontario Place in Toronto, debuted in May 1971 and reopened in 2017 with IMAX 70 mm and IMAX with laser illumination.
• The IMAX 15/70 film format uses 65 mm film stock running horizontally through the camera, 15 perforations at a time, moving at 102.7 meters per minute.