The history of lenticular - lenticular methods

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Figure 13. A lenticular lens array (Roberts, 1992)

In the late 1920's, several scientists, including Herbert Ives, began to consider simplifying Lippmann's integral (fly's-eye) lens array by incorporating a lenticular lens array. A lenticular lens sheet consists of a linear array of thick plano-convex cylindrical lenses, known individually as "lenticules". The lens sheet is transparent and the rear face, which constitutes the focal plane, is flat. A big advantage was it was optically analogous to the parallax barrier screen, and could therefore draw on a wealth of barrier screen research.

In the 1930's many researchers worked on advancing the technology. There was the British "Lenticulated screen" process, the French method of Josse, and the German "Diacor" method. Ives also attained considerable practical success.

When a lenticular array is coated with a film emulsion at its focal plane and exposed to light rays from a particular angle, once developed it will redirect the light rays in the same approximate direction as the recording angle. This unique property found its first successful commercial application not as a tool for 3D photography but as a means for producing color motion picture film as the original Kodak Kodacolor process introduced in 1928. Instead of individual stereo images being exposed behind the lenticular screen, individual stripe images relating to red, green, and blue aspects of a single view were recorded and re-combined through a special projection system into a full color image using only black and white emulsion (Figure 14).

The process, using a very thin and fine screen of 600 lenses per inch on 16 millimeter film, ran for a number of years with considerable success, and the Eastman Kodak company as recently as 1951 was offering an improved version for the 35mm format.

3D lenticular photography was later greatly advanced by Professor Maurice Bonnet of France, and Doug Winnek and Victor Anderson of the U.S.

Professor Bonnet developed a number of patented camera designs and imaging techniques including electron microscope imaging, amongst many others. His cameras became so widely recognized that most scanning lens cameras are still referred to as a "Bonnet-Style Cameras".

Figure 15. Professor Maurice Bonnet pears though a lenticular screen.
(Photo source: newspaper L' Express, courtesy of Michéle Bonnet)