High efficiency optical projector for 3D motion pictures

Claim 1

A motion picture projection system, comprising a light source, a first reflector, a surface on said first reflector, said surface being an ellipse of revolution with a first focus and a second focus, said focii being coincident with said axis of revolution, a light source located at said first focus, a first lens, said first lens having a first spherical surface with its center of curvature at said second focus, and a first aspheric surface; said second lens having a second spherical surface with its center of curvature also at said second focus, and a second aspheric surface, a first rectangular aperture plate, a multilayer sheet polarizer at Brewster's angle to said axis, at least one surface having a high index layer capable of polarizing light by reflection and transmission, said reflected polarized light rays and said transmitted polarized light rays being polarized with their planes of polarization at right angles, a second reflector, said second reflector redirecting said reflected polarized light rays parallel and contiguous to said transmitted polarized light rays, a conventional film strip having a succession of image areas, a standard second aperture for said images, each said image area having a black bar centered in said image area, right and left stereo images in areas on each side of said black bar within said second aperture, said transmitted polarized rays impinging on one of said stereo image areas, and said reflected polarized rays impinging on the other said stereo image area, a projection lens, a first prism and a second prism, a first polarizer and a second polarizer, said first polarizer and said first prism in combination, and said second polarizer and said second prism in combination, said combined polarizer-prisms bending and further polarizing said rays, a metallized reflecting screen for reflecting said stereo images as polarized rays reflecting the image rays from said screen, a polarized viewer comprising a frame, right eye and left eye aperture mountings on said frame, polarized filter sheets having horizontal and vertical planes of polarization mounted in said right eye and left eye apertures respectively whereby the right eye image is transmitted only by said right polarized filter sheet, and said left eye image is transmitted only by said left eye polarized filter sheet, and whereby the light efficiency of said system is at least doubled, compared to said projector system without said multilayer polarizers and said second reflector.