A Little
General Drive-In Theatre History - YEAR 2008 MARKED 75 YEARS OF
THE DRIVE-IN THEATRE INVENTION.
A young sales manager by the name of Richard
Hollingshead who worked at his father's Auto Products Store, had
an idea to invent something that combined his two interests: cars
and movies.
Richard Hollingshead's vision was an open-air movie theater where
moviegoers could watch from their own cars. He experimented in his
own driveway at 212 Thomas Avenue, Camden, New Jersey. The
inventor mounted a 1928 Kodak projector on the hood of his car,
projected onto a screen he had nailed to trees in his backyard,
and used a radio placed behind the screen for sound.
The inventor subjected his new drive-in to vigorous testing: for
sound quality, for different weather conditions (Richard used a
lawn sprinkler to imitate rain) and for figuring out how to park
the patrons' cars. Richard tried lining up the cars in his
driveway, which created a problem with line of sight if one car
was directly parked behind another car. By spacing cars at various
distances and placing blocks and ramps under the front wheels of
cars that were further away from the screen, Richard Hollingshead
created the perfect parking elevation for the drive-in movie
theater experience.
The first patent for the Drive-In Theater (United States Patent#
1,909,537) was issued on May 16, 1933. With an investment of
$30,000, Richard opened the first drive-in on Tuesday June 6, 1933
at a location on Crescent Boulevard, Camden, New Jersey. The price
of admission was 25 cents for the car and 25 cents per person.
The design did not include the in-car speaker system we know
today. The inventor contacted a company by the name of RCA Victor
to provide the sound system, called "Directional Sound." Three
main speakers were mounted next to the screen that provided sound.
The sound quality was not good for cars in the rear of the theater
or for the surrounding neighbors.
The largest drive-in theater in patron capacity was the
All-Weather Drive-In of Copiague, New York. All-Weather had
parking space for 2,500 cars, an indoor 1,200 seat viewing area,
kid's playground, a full service restaurant and a shuttle train
that took customers from their cars and around the 28-acre theater
lot.
The two smallest drive-ins were the Harmony Drive-In of Harmony
Pennsylvania and the Highway Drive-In of Bamberg, South Carolina.
Both drive-ins could hold no more than 50 cars.
An interesting innovation was the combination drive-in and fly-in
theater. On June 3, 1948, Edward Brown, Junior opened the first
theater for cars and small planes. Ed Brown's Drive-In and Fly-In
of Asbury Park, New Jersey had the capacity for 500 cars and 25
airplanes. An airfield was placed next to the drive-in and planes
would taxi to the last row of the theater. When the movies were
over, Brown provided a tow for the planes to be brought back to
the airfield. |
