Cinerama, in motion pictures, a process in which three synchronized movie projectors each project one-third of the picture on a wide, curving screen. Many viewers believe that the screen, which thus annexes their entire field of vision, gives a sense of reality unmatched by the flat screen. Invented by the New York City photographer Fred Waller, the first Cinerama movie, This Is Cinerama, was presented in New York City in 1952. It was soon presented in theatres across the country that leased the necessary equipment from the privately owned Cinerama, Inc. For 10 years Cinerama films were mainly travelogues, but in 1962 the first Cinerama story film, How the West Was Won, was released.
Cinerama was a popular film novelty, but its costs were prohibitive, and the process was abandoned in the 1960s. What was later referred to as Cinerama was essentially a one-projector 70-mm variant on the anamorphic CinemaScope process.