Dr Henry Roger—

Remembering The Wizard Of Sandy Hook And The Rolab Studios And Photo-Science Lab

By Jan Howard

From Army training films to recordings by such musical artists as Michael Bolton and Paul Winter, Dr Henry Roger’s Rolab Studios and Photo-Science Laboratories on Walnut Tree Hill Road earned wide recognition for its work in the highly specialized field of high fidelity recording and development of related equipment.

Dr Roger’s talents were many — as biophysicist with a PhD in bacteriology, inventor, photographer, and authority on optics and sound. He was born in Germany on January 16, 1891, and started life as a concert pianist, but World War I intervened, and his life took a different path. According to his great-nephew John Staber, he came to the United States in 1923 through the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute where he was affiliated with the late Dr Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize winner, for 11 years. He moved to Newtown in the 1930s.

A Bridgeport Sunday Post story on December 14, 1947, referred to Dr Roger as “the wizard of Sandy Hook,” noting that “the world of science has beaten a path to his Connecticut home and laboratory located in the woods.”

He was an early pioneer in time-lapse photography. The Post described him as “a trained research scientist who uses with rare skill a microscope, a camera, and his own intricate timing devices to record his findings,” showing the growth of cancer tissue over a certain period of time or, in industrial research, recording what happens to motor oils at freezing temperatures.

According to the Post story, in 1912 Dr Roger took the first photographs ever taken from a plane. While he was with the German Navy Aviation Corps he experimented with aerial photography and was known as a pioneer in that field. In 1918 he took aerial shots of submarines that were 100 feet below the surface of the water.

Following World War I, he opened a small laboratory in Berlin, doing research work in microscopy. He also was chief photographer for Max Reinhardt, a world-famous theater impresario.

Local residents have contrasting memories of Dr Roger and Rolab. Caryl Stratton lived in his former residence from 1976 to 1996, when she passed on information about the studio and Dr Roger and his wife, Eleonore, to the new owners, Brian and Susan Keane, who currently display photographs of Dr and Mrs Rogers in their home.

According to Ms Stratton and Bruce McLaughlin, who purchased the property from Dr Roger in the mid 1960s, the Army Corp of Engineers built the studio for Dr Roger to produce training films for the army.

“The studio was paid for by the US Army,” Mr McLaughlin said. “The studio was built during the first part of the 1940s.”

“I worked for them as a kid,” First Selectman Herb Rosenthal said recently. While he remembers Dr Roger as “a kindly gentleman,” it is Mrs Roger that Mr Rosenthal remembers the most, because he worked for her planting gardens.

“I planted pachysandra plants by the thousands,” he said. “I never wanted to see pachysandra ever again. It’s 32 years ago, and I still have the memory.” Mrs Roger would bring him iced tea while he was working, he said.

Mrs Roger “was like someone out of the Sound of Music. She had silvery gray hair that was either braided or in a knot and wore frilly dresses,” he remembers. “She was a very refined woman.”

Cliff Walker, who worked for Cashman Drug in Sandy Hook at that time, remembers there were times when the store needed to send film to Rolab for emergency processing.

The 1,800-square-foot, two-story studio was the scene of many films and recordings from the 1940s through the 1960s. In addition, Rolab also served as a consultant to American science and industry in the field of optical-electrical and photographic engineering. The company not only did highly technical motion picture and still photography, it also developed numerous special apparatus in its field.

According to a pamphlet supplied by the company to potential clients, Rolab-built devices could be found operating in leading research laboratories, government institutions, and were standard equipment in laboratories doing research on tissue cultures of normal and malignant cells.

Rolab products and services were purchased by many companies, such as Connecticut Light & Power, Southern New England Telephone, Stanley Tools, Winchester Repeating Arms Company, S. Curtis & Son, The Barden Corp, Brandon Films, and Kraft Foods, among others.

It also provided services to universities, foundations, and hospitals, as well as American film and TV producers, advertising agencies, and the military.

Its sound stage, which could be rented, was acoustically engineered, with a hanging gallery, overhead catwalk, dressing and director’s rooms, automatic heating and cooling system, lighting and other equipment, props, as well as a grand piano and organ. The rental fee varied from $60 a day to $320 for six.

Optional services included rental of camera, sound, and lighting equipment, set construction in studio or outdoors, carpentry and instrument shops, and more.

In addition to recording stars, a number of other well-known people visited Rolab to make recordings or film. At one time Lowell Thomas was a visitor at the audio/visual center, where his voice was recorded for a motion picture.

On another occasion, The Newtown Bee noted a 25-member symphony orchestra recorded a score there that was in conjunction with the presentation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at Wesleyan University in Middletown. The Steinway grand piano used by the orchestra was borrowed from Dr Roger’s residence and was hoisted through a second-story window by piano movers from Bridgeport, a major undertaking.

On February 16, 1951, The Bee noted that many films, scientific, educational, and promotional, had been produced at Rolab. A historical drama produced by Dr Roger called Telephone Pioneers, was an authentic photoplay of events in the early days of the world’s first commercial telephone exchange in New Haven.

The Bee reported that this original central office was faithfully reproduced based on old records and photographs. “Costumes, props, even the looks of the characters themselves and their varied personalities conform to their earlier counterparts,” The Bee wrote.

The drama was originally written for presentation at the annual meeting of the retired members of the Connecticut branch of the Telephone Pioneers of America, a national organization of people who served at least 21 years in the telephone industry.

The play was presented in three episodes, the first based on February 21, 1878, when the first telephone directory was delivered to the founders of the exchange, George W. Coy and Herrick P. Frost. Frank McMullen, assistant professor of drama at Yale, directed the play, and set construction was by the Yale School of Drama. “Dr Roger supplied the technical knowledge and equipment for which Rolab made a name for itself,” The Bee noted.

On May 23, 1952, The Newtown Bee reported that Rolab had received a Certificate of Merit from Freedoms Foundation, Inc at Valley Forge for the film, and Melvin H. Leonad, its vice president, made the presentation in Sandy Hook.

In August 1947, Rolab produced a two-reel color short, Table Manners, narrated by etiquette expert Emily Post. The film, the first of a planned series, discussed etiquette for the dinner table, based on Ms Post’s books and newspaper columns.

Many local residents were engaged in the production, with Dr Roger as cameraman. Virginia Hopkins was the leading lady. With her in many scenes were Eloise Bowen, Easter Becker, and George Marriott of Newtown, among others. Eberhardt and Madelaine von Jarochowski designed and constructed the sets; Tommy Ramsdell was in charge of property; Art Smith, props; Frank Dubeck, makeup; Phil Guarneri, film editing; and Mary McCarthy, secretary.

The film was to premiere in Newtown on October 1, after which it was to be exhibited at women’s clubs, schools and colleges, and in newsreel theaters.

On October 15, The Newtown Bee reported on an Omnibus television program that would feature a sequence of pictures taken at Rolab for the Ford Foundation that illustrated, both in picture and sound, what happens when a baby chick emerges from its shell.

Dr Roger was also an inventor. He developed and built the Lifwynn Eye-Movement Camera in the late 1930s. The registration and analysis of eye movements was undertaken as part of the study of the physiological alterations related to neurotic disorders.

The camera was especially designed to photograph eye movements exactly and continuously. The camera made it possible to record both horizontal and vertical components of eye movements on one rolling film.

In November 1951 The Bee reported that Dr Roger had developed a computer for use in film editing, called Ready-Eddy, which was small enough to fit into a pocket or purse. It was described as accurate and useful for scriptwriters, sound engineers, editors, and cutters, among others.

The device made it possible for questions about footage, projection time in minutes and seconds, number of frames per foot and per second, and equivalents of 16mm and 35mm to be answered by rotating an indicator on a plastic disk.

Mr McLaughlin said Dr Roger gave him the right to sell the Reddy-Eddy machines that remained in the mid-1960s. “I sold them for a few years after I bought the property,” he said. “They’re not used any more.”

Scientific papers by Dr Roger were also published in the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, such as one in 1939 that addressed “New Uses of Sound Motion Pictures in Medical Instruction.” It described problems encountered during production of motion pictures for the New York State Department of Health to instruct physicians, nurses, and the general public in treatment of pneumonia patients.

After selling the property, Dr Roger closed Rolab and he and Mrs Roger moved to Heritage Village in Southbury. He died on July 12, 1982, and was survived by his wife.

The Rolab sign remained on Walnut Tree Hill Road, in front of the stonewall in the pachysandra, until last year when Ms Keane presented it to Mr Staber as a memento of his great-uncle and his work.