<p>It will be eighty years since the invention of the drive-in theater.</p>

Camden - Watching movies on enormous screens under the stars from the comfort of your car seat while enjoying, cheering, laughing, clapping, and rustling anything you like was made possible for American film audiences by the drive-in theater. This invention offered various advantages and was quite popular in the USA at one time. Elsewhere, however, it remained a marginal affair and today is more of a nostalgic glance back at bygone times. The first film was screened in front of parked cars in Camden, New Jersey, on June 6, 1933.
    And that was thanks to Richard Hollingshead. This young car salesman and enthusiastic film fan sought a way to combine his two greatest loves. So he stretched a bedsheet between trees in his backyard in New Jersey, placed a film projector on the hood of a car, put a radio behind the screen, and began experimenting. He tested the sound with windows closed, open, and partially open. He tried projecting in sunlight, wind, rain, and even during a simulated storm using a lawn sprinkler.
    In the end, he had just one problem left: when cars parked one behind the other, people in the back had a poor view. So he arranged the cars at different distances and propped up their front wheels with various objects until he found the right angle. He then applied for a patent for his invention. He received it on May 16, 1933.
    The admission fee at the first drive-in was 25 cents per car and 25 cents per person. Sound flowed from three large speakers next to the screen, so the quality was poor and likely did not please the nearby neighbors. Nevertheless, the invention began to spread rapidly across the country.
    By 1942, there were already one hundred drive-ins in the USA, and by 1948, approximately 800. Their expansion was aided by improved sound technology, which transmitted audio directly to car radios via a transmitter. With the post-war baby boom at the turn of the 40s and 50s, families with small children flooded the drive-ins. "You can take the kids in their pajamas and spend a magical summer evening under the stars - who would want to trudge into a crowded movie theater in the city?" the promoters lured them.
    The largest of them all was the Copiague drive-in in New York. It had an outdoor space for 2500 cars and an indoor space for 1200 viewers, a playground, a restaurant, and a train that transported viewers around the extensive grounds. The most interesting was the "aerokino," which Edward Brown opened for cars and small airplanes in Asbury Park, New Jersey, on June 3, 1948. It had a capacity of 500 cars and 25 planes. The landing strip was right next to the cinema, and the airplanes lined up behind the cars.
    By 1958, around 4000 of these cinemas had sprung up in the USA and Canada. The subsequent decline in interest is sometimes attributed to the introduction of daylight saving time. Many parents did not want to take their children to shows that started at ten o'clock at night. And with the end of the baby boom, customers simply decreased. The 1970s and 80s brought tough competition in the form of cable television and video. Many drive-ins sold their plots to commercial companies which built shopping centers on them.
    In 1990, there were 910 drive-ins left in the USA. Currently, this original form of entertainment is experiencing a mild renaissance - along with the introduction of more screens and quality transmitted sound.
    Czech lovers of this film entertainment do not have it easy. Several attempts - in Prague's Strahov, in Plzeň, or in Čermná nad Orlicí - mostly did not survive two seasons. Likewise, there is no longer a drive-in that the Čadík brothers rented in the summer of 1999 at the Černý Most Center, nor is there the Vyžlovka Drive-in near Kostelec nad Černými lesy.
    In Ostrava, a summer drive-in has been screening films for several years in the area of the motor exchange on Místecká street, always for a few evenings each season. It appears that it will operate again this year.