As for why Napoleon (1927) was not referred to in a story about Fred Waller and his invention Cinerama, it's because he never saw it in 3 panels. No one in the US had until 1981 when Kevin Brownlow brought his restoration over. "Napoléon was first released in a gala at the Palais Garnier (then the home of the Paris Opera) on 7 April 1927. Napoléon had been screened in only eight European cities when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought the rights to it, but after screening it in London, it was cut drastically in length, and only the central panel of the three-screen Polyvision sequences was retained before it was put on limited release in the United States. There, the film was indifferently received at a time when talkies were just starting to appear. The film was restored in 1981 after twenty years' work by silent film historian Kevin Brownlow."
To quote Greg Kimble, author of the 1983 article from American Cinematographer and wrote this in an article about Cinerama 50th anniversary, "When "TIC" became the surprise hit of the 1954 Exposition in Damascus, completely eclipsing the Soviet exhibits, the Russians built their own 3-panel system, claiming the US had stolen it from them (of course). KinoPanorama was a huge hit both in the Soviet Union, where 15 films were made, and took prizes at later world fairs." Who, I believe is quoting Lowell Thomas producer of This Is Cinerama and who was there in 1954.
Cinerama was a flawed format. CineMiracle and Kinopanorama [in regards to their second camera design] addressed, for the most part, its problems with the introduction of mirrors in the lenses. Kinopanorama's second camera also featured removable lens kits, each of which had different focal-lengths. Cinerama and CineMiracle's fixed lenses were 27mm only.
The Kinopanorama productions, aside from the grainy Sovcolor film sock, were superior in most respects to Cinerama. Too bad that only a single CineMiracle film was produced.
