Nimslo

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The Nimslo is a lenticular stereo camera with viewfinder. It uses common 35 mm film in 135 film format cartridges. It was produced in the 1980s by Nimslo Corp of Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

It has fixed focus an automatic exposure. The four lenses take four pictures simultaneously. Lenticular prints would be ordered from special print shops using dedicated printers.

Nimslo and its lenticular printer was invented by Jerry Curtis Nims and Allen Kwok Wah Lo, both from Georgia, USA.^[1]

1 US patents
2 Nimslo Corp, Timex and Fred Olsen
3 Mark 1S and Mark 1A Printers
4 References
5 External links

[edit] US patents

The technology was protected by US patents.

3,960,563 - Methods and apparatus for taking and composing stereoscopic pictures
4,037,950 - Camera for taking stereoscopic pictures
4,063,265 - Apparatus for taking stereoscopic pictures

[edit] Nimslo Corp, Timex and Fred Olsen

The shares of the Nimslo Corp were bought by Eagleville Company in October 1980, again controlled by the Ptarmigan Trust that at the same time gained control over Timex Corporation. The whole operation was controlled by billionaire Fredrik Olsen "Fred Olsen", in charge of the Fred. Olsen & Co. shipping company. Fred Olsen is a technological and industrial visionary and believed strongly in the Nimslo product. He wanted the Timex factory in Dundee in Scotland to produce the cameras, as they had already produced cameras for Polaroid. He established a guarantee of 25 million USD for the acquisition of the Nimslo shares.^[2]

Nimslo Corp went bankrupt and was partly sold in the mid 1990s to a Nevada company called Nishika who later introduced a three lens stereo camera.^[1]

[edit] Mark 1S and Mark 1A Printers

The original Nimslo photographic printer (the Mark 1S) was controlled by a KIM-1 processor. The operator had to view the actual images to align the images. The time to create a picture was measured in minutes. The second photographic printer was the Mark 1A. This printer was controlled by a Data General MicroNova processor, using the MP/OS operating system. This machine used a video system and was able to create a picture in about 15 seconds.