John Maurer Papers

John Maurer was born in Massillon, Ohio, in 1905. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1928 from Adelbert College of Western Reserve University in Cleveland, graduating summa cum laude. The following year he left graduate school at Western Reserve to join the RCA Research Laboratory in New York city where he worked until 1932. During that time he was responsible for 17 patents. Maurer left RCA to work on his own, and in 1934 he joined Eric M. Berndt to form the Berndt-Maurer Corp. The company made professional 16mm cameras and sound recording equipment.

In 1940 Berndt left the firm which then became J .A. Maurer, Inc. During World War II J.A. Maurer, Inc., manufactured signaling equipment, for which it received the Army-Navy 11E11 Award. In 1945 Maurer himself received a personal award II for exceptional service to naval ordnance development. 11 During the 1940s Maurer promoted the use of 16mm films in education and advocated college-level training in film production. The result of this effort was the formation of the University Film Producer's Association.

In 1951 Maurer developed a small, fast-cycling aerial camera and spent much of the next four years working on aerial photography. In 1955 Maurer left J.A. Maurer, Inc., and the following year established J.M. Developments. This company was intended to specialize in motion pictures, but much of the work continued his aerial photography research, including a camera with an extremely fast shutter speed. The high-speed shutter allowed low-altitude and supersonic planes to photograph continuously. This shutter was part of a camera used in reconnaissance missions over Cuba during the missile crisis of 1962. Maurer developed a 70mm camera used in the Gemini XI mission in 1966 and on the first moon landing.

In 1965 J.M. Developments became Optronics Technology, Inc., and Maurer served as senior vice president for engineering until his retirement in 1971. At Optronics he developed the Optronics Mark I 16mm to Super 8 quad continuous optical printer. By the time of his death in New Brunswick, New Jersey, on March 20, 1988, Maurer held approximately 60 U.S. patents in the fields of sound recording, camera design and photographic chemistry.

Maurer's professional affiliations included the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers. He joined the Society in 1930 and became a fellow in 1943. He wrote a number of articles for the Society's Journal and served in several positions, including Chairman of the Committee on Nontheatrical Motion Pictures (1940-1943), member of the Board of Governors (1943-1945) and Engineering Vice-President (1945-1950). Maurer received two awards from the Society: the first Samuel L. Warner Medal (1947) and the Eastman Kodak Medal Award (1971). Other professional organizations with which Maurer was associated included the American Standards Association, for which he chaired the Committee PH-22 (Motion Picture standardization) from 1951 to 1952. Maurer was also a member of the Society of Photographic Engineers, becoming a fellow in 1955 and serving as Engineering Vice-President. He was a charter member of the Acoustical Society of America.

Maurer was awarded two honorary degrees. The first was Doctor of Science from his alma mater, Western Reserve University, in 1953. The other was Doctor of Science from the Ohio state University for his work in film education, awarded in 1971.

Sources for this biography were: Maurer's obituaries in The Home News (March 21 and 24, 1988) and New York Times (March 23, 1988); "Biographical Notes" in the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (March 1972); and personal biographical information in the collection.