The April Fool Archive

The Cloud Cinema    (April Fool's Day - 1936)

The Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung reported that a "cloud cinema" had debuted in Berlin. Five massive lenses projected a moving image onto a cloudy sky. The picture, visible throughout much of the city, measured 1000x750 meters, "four times as long and three times as high as the new zeppelin is long."

The image was, at present, slightly blurry, but improvements were promised in the future. And on days when there were no clouds, it was planned to create artificial clouds via fog machines attached to balloons.

In its subsequent issue, the magazine admitted, "All the angels would watch and be stirred out of their peace if the cloud cinema of our April edition were true."


"The first trial a splendid success: weekly newsreels in the Berlin sky"



"The sky picture is still somewhat blurry. It's light quality decreases strongly towards the outer edge. Through an improvement of the lens system, which accomplishes an automatic focus through an electric-light method, these problems will soon be overcome. Even the first experiments have shown that the projections onto the cloud cover are surprisingly three-dimensional. Instead of the clouds one can also in future use artificial fog banks which will serve as a screen, and which can be produced from a balloon that is anchored to a firm site."



"All the angels would watch and be stirred out of their peace if the cloud cinema of our April edition were true."

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