In the same sense that hearing an old song can bring buried emotions to the fore, my recent rediscovery of the above-pictured book set off a cascade of feelings from my earliest days in the camera department. During that ’80’s pre-internet era, it was one of the few resources DP-aspirants could rely on for useful information. As its dog-eared pages will attest, I spent many late nights absorbing as much of it as I could.
Leslie J. Wheeler – though a fully-credited member of the BSC and the British Kinematograph, Sound and Television Society, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society – was not a cinematographer. He was a motion picture technologist. Born in 1918 in Enfield, his father was employed by the Prestwick Camera Company, which provided generous exposure to the related equipment. By young adulthood, he was an expert on the engineering behind the creation and delivery of cinema. Rounding out his knowledge, he spent a period working for Kodak, followed by a stint at MGM British Studios.
But Wheeler is best-known for his book (first published in 1953), which covers all aspects of camera mechanisms, film manufacture and perforation, projection, sound-on-film recording and laboratory practices. Though some of it was a bit over my head at the time, it provided a fabulous grounding in the essentials and helped point me in the right direction to fill the gaps in my knowledge.
In 1993 the British Entertainment History Project conducted an audio interview with the man himself. You can find it by following the link below:
https://historyproject.org.uk/interview/leslie-j-wheeler
Leslie J. Wheeler, BSC, BKSTS, FRPS, SMPTE
What a great book. I misplaced my copy many years ago. It was a treasure when I first started at Technicolor in 1979.
Oh man! The cover image is a treasure to me. It shows a 24″ MOY head. These are hard to find pictures of. We have one here which was converted by ILM for motion control. Your post has helped me to confirm what it would have looked like in it’s original state. MOY JOY…