Thank you to the shout out to my father, Preston Fleet, for his work on developing Omnimax and everything is the article is factually correct. He died young after also building Fotomat and WD40 (and funding the Cabaret movie, for which he shared an Oscar). He shied away from the spotlight and named everything after his contributors because he was kind. And a totally shock the author knew about his presidency at the American Theatre Organ Society, which my mother followed after his death. Unfortunate selfish to say in a public forum, but really just want to thank the article's author in some way
We took a "behind the scenes" your years ago and got to see the projection dome from the outside. That was pretty freaky.
That seems consistent with this announcement from 2017 that the theater was going to close (citing a quarter century): https://www.pittsburghmagazine.com/rangos-omnimax-theater-to...
I couldn't find any press covering it from 1978, although this directory of IMAX/Omnimax theaters from 1992 matches my recollection of it opening in ~1991.
The same illustration appeared with announcements of some other Omnimax theaters, but I suspect it had just been copied from the Minnesota design without paying much attention. The captions never mention the STS.
However, the side control booth located about halfway up the house, which is present in all of the Omnimax theaters where I've been able to check, is labeled as the "Planetarium console." This could explain the curiosity of the '90s Omnimax theaters having two different control booths. It seems odd to keep that feature without the planetarium projector.
The Fleet was where I played the Coordination Game with 2 hand controls and 2 pedals for my feet, old incandescent bulbs behind colored cels to match up simultaneously. I think I scored over 30.
The Fleet was where I took science classes in summertime. We learned how to make “Oobleck” and we used Apple ][ computers. It was where I found my first blinking cursor. I couldn’t type; I couldn’t find “g” on a Qwerty!
Fleet had the Cloud Chamber and Whisper Dishes and the big Periscope that must’ve got moved 5 times??? There was the orbital simulator where you’d roll balls down a black conical incline, and someone else threw in a coin?
We watched Carl Sagan do stuff and Jacques Cousteau. None of the IMAX films had a memorable name or stars, but they were all documentaries with obligatory aerial shots on the geodesic dome.
One science thing not in the Fleet science center but across the Prado, just as near the giant fountain: "The Nat" (San Diego Natural History Museum) hosted a giant Foucault Pendulum, 3+ stories high, toppling "dominoes" all day every day, to tell us the time!
Very late in time, it must've been ca. 2005 -- Mythbusters Live was on tour and they made an appearance at the Fleet. So it was Kari Byron and that Japanese guy who's dead now, and someone else like, I don't know, all my attention and amorous energy was focused on Kari, OK? And they had a panel discussion and then a live Meet & Greet and we posed for a photo while Mythbusters characters posed in real life next to us. And they autographed my photo I think. They had a full Mythbusters-themed display at the Fleet during that time, with hands-on.
Hands-on is the name of the game at the Fleet. You touch it! It moves! You respond! Der Blïnkënlīghts! It's a museum and a science center!
I purchased and ate genuine Astronaut Ice Cream (freeze dried) from the gift shop. A hologram sheet that was a real laser-encoded, white-light 3D hologram of a woman blowing a kiss! The Fleet Gift Shop had the best science toys and the best hard-science experiments! Reality-based, evidence-based entertainment! ("Edu-tainment"???)
The Fleet had one or two little side theaters where they would hold lectures and in-person appearances. We were rarely privileged to peek in, or much less sit in there; it seemed like a VIP experience. But they definitely had a screen and a lectern and awesome sciency science.
I believe that Tijuana eventually built their own IMAX attraction theater across the international border. You could go to smelly polluted Mexico and have your stupid turistic IMAX show. But OMNIMAX was different and something uniquely special. And plenty of mojados in San Diego proper. With clean air and crystal clear waters in the Coronado bay!
I never saw the Pink Floyd show!!! You must be mentally ill to purchase a ticket and I was diagnosed late. But the Pink Floyd Laser Show was the only laser show and it was a huge thing in the 1980s! It was like Grateful Dead jams for nerds!
This paragraph is bizarre to me, framed from a presumably extremely niche "Sphere-as-dome-theater" perspective. I would think that, for most people, the Sphere is the exterior part and it delivers and is every bit as innovative as anyone who has seen a picture of it would say. I don't understand the effort to downplay that and say "oh forget that part it's actually just a not-even-spherical dome theater."
But still, it feels weird to express a sentiment of "well it didn't really live up to the sphere thing" while dismissing the massive obvious spherical component that was the innovative work of engineering/tech/art/whatever.
There is something I've wondered about though:
> While far from inexpensive, digital projection systems are now able to match the quality of Omnimax projection.
Are they really? The St Louis Science Center Omnimax was switched from the 70mm film system to "laser 4k" digital projection in 2019. I've only been to one show but it didn't seem particularly sharp, with large clearly visible pixels. It was very bright, with high contrast, though.
4k seems like a pretty low resolution for such a large screen?
I think that digital LED domes might beat film because of the excellent light output and color reproduction, but I guess I'll have to shell out for the Sphere to find out as there are very few of that size.
I’m also slightly embarrassed to just now learn that the opening sequence where the speakers and backing structure for the screen are shown looked so real because…it was. They weren’t projecting an image, just turning on lights so you could see back through the perforated metal screen!
(luckily, the Ft Worth theater specifically was converted to an LED screen and recently reopened)
I got confused about the name of the company and even Wikipedia seems to be very inconsistent about it [1].
What exactly was it called in 1960s and 70s, "Multiscreen Corporation" or "IMAX Corporation"?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAX_Corporation:
It says:
> IMAX is a Canadian corporation that is based in Mississauga, Ontario. The company was founded in 1967 when three filmmakers—Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor and Robert Kerr—incorporated IMAX Corporation
No mention of "Multiscreen Corporation" other than in the infobox.
I'm not sure if any later similar rides used a similar system, (for example Disney's Soarin') or if they are new enough to be digital from the start.
I saw "To Fly!" for the first time at the Smithsonian Air and Space Dulles location (Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center) on their IMAX screen two years ago. Definitely a film of its moment, and I can see how that influenced future science film documentaries.
My dad worked for Spitz doing Omnimax installations and planetariums, but I don't know any of the details. I would assume this was probably the late 70s or early 80s.
As I grew up, I started seeing/hearing about IMAX movies, and didn't realize they were different until I went to one in another part of the country. I was very excited to go, as it had been a long time since I had been to an Omnimax.
I was pretty confused and disappointed, which is a weird reaction to have the first time in an IMAX theater. "It's just a big screen... Where's the dome?"
"Who put the bomp in the bomp sha bomp!"
I too had a similar reaction the first time I saw an imax.
I read your response and was like, "Huh?", then it hit me. That's easily a 30 year old memory sitting in deep storage. I haven't been there, or thought about it since college. The human brain is amazing.
And since we live in the future, I can easily find a clip of it online:
Sadly the OSC as a whole is now being demolished after years of under-investment and mismanagement, and the Cinesphere (IMAX) at Ontario Place is likewise in dire straits.
