Maggs Bros.

The remarkable machine described here, usually known as the Waller Gunnery Trainer, was the invention of Fred Waller, and sprang from his pre-war attempts to create a three-dimensional cinema, using a spherical screen and multiple projectors. On the outbreak of war, the technology was rapidly adapted to build the present simulator, which places the training machine gunner behind a “synthetic” gun taking fire at targets on the screen, allowing for deflection, fore-shortening and the like. After the war this sword was recast as a ploughshare as the technology was transferred to the Cinerama projection system, which still has something of a cult following: its flaws (notably the fact that there is a very small sweet spot from which to watch the screen) were actually strengths in its wartime use.The machine kept score of the gunner’s success in real time, and despite its Heath Robinson appearance, was a great success, and some 85 of them were apparently built.Extraordinary claims were made at the time, for instance that 1,000,000 men were trained on them and that operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there was not one breakdown.