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SMPTE Turns 100!
Barbara Lange, SMPTE Executive Director
The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), a leader in motion-imaging standards and education for the communications, media, entertainment, and technology industries, celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. The Society, along with motion imaging and sound technologies, has evolved in many ways over the past century, but its primary mission -- a commitment to enabling interoperability – remains unchanged.
The formation of the Society began in the early 1900s when the lack of standards within the emerging motion picture industry created chaos. In particular, variations in equipment from manufacturer to manufacturer made it
problematic to project images successfully, if at all.
The Society of Motion Picture Engineers (SMPE) was officially created in 1916 under the leadership of C. Francis Jenkins, an inventor from Washington, D.C., who had developed a motion picture projector in 1895, as well as an underwater camera and a panoramic camera for aerial views. (The “T” in “SMPTE” was added in 1950 to embrace the emerging television industry.) In 2015, SMPTE consolidated with the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA), formerly known as the Hollywood Post Alliance, an alignment that further supports SMPTE’s evolution as it brings together the creative and technical communities.
Since 1916, the Society has leveraged innovation to develop more than 800
standards, recommended practices, and engineering guidelines. SMPTE today generates an annual average of 50 new standards documents focused on cinema, television, Internet video, audio, and associated metadata.
The value and importance of SMPTE’s standards development work have been recognized by an Oscar® statuette, eight Technology & Engineering Emmy® statuettes. Within the past year, both the Television Academy of Arts and Sciences (ATAS) and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) have recognized SMPTE for reaching its century milestone. The Special Award plaque from AMPAS honors the fact that, “For one hundred years, the Society’s members have nurtured technology, provided essential standards, and offered the expertise, support, tools and infrastructure for the creation and post-production of motion pictures.” In practical terms, SMPTE standards promote interoperability between systems and manufacturers while giving end users a broad choice of products and brands.
Well-known examples of SMPTE’s innovation and leadership include SMPTE Time Code, which is used throughout the world to facilitate the synchronization of picture and