Cinerama was invented by Fred Waller (1886–1954) and languished in the laboratory for several years before Waller, joined by Hazard "Buzz" Reeves, brought it to the attention of Lowell Thomas who, first with Mike Todd and later with Merian C. Cooper, produced a commercially viable demonstration of Cinerama that opened on Broadway on September 30, 1952. The film, titled "This is Cinerama", was received with enthusiasm. It was the outgrowth of many years of development. A forerunner was the triple-screen final sequence in the silent "Napoléon" (1927) directed by Abel Gance; Gance's classic was considered lost in the 1950s, however, known of only by hearsay, and Waller could not have actually viewed it. Waller had earlier developed an 11-projector system called "Vitarama" at the Petroleum Industry exhibit in the 1939 New York World's Fair. A five-camera version, the Waller Gunnery Trainer, was used during the Second World War.