Those of us that were not around during the Second World War cannot appreciate how much that monumental event occupied the minds of everyone, everywhere, even those tens of thousands of miles from the hostilities. In researching this era, I found that the content of virtually every publication was at least 50% devoted to war related subjects. The article on Fred Waller's revolutionary gunnery trainer was but one of many that were featured in the September issue of Popular Science and that issue was no different than the others published during that period.

The cover of this issue features a bit of irony. The painting of the house at upper right on the cover was painted by Alexander Leydenfrost, who specialized in painting wartime aircraft and naval vessels. In 1952, Mr. Leydenfrost would accept a commission to render, in charcoal, a number of promotional illustrations for a new motion picture system called CINERAMA.

This article is fairly brief, (how much information can you give out when Nazi and Jap agents are subscribers?), consisting of two pages of text and photos and a two page illustration of the system with a detail of the "Hit Register". After reading this material, you may come to the conclusion that Waller developed the first Virtual Reality system.