History of Films and Cinemas

Pre-Eastman Pioneers and Innovators

A nutshell history of films and cameras, including the early movie innovators and pioneers before Eastman are highlighted. When the celluloid film rolls were produced by American George Eastman of Kodak Company the motion picture became possible.

When the celluloid film rolls were produced by American George Eastman of Kodak Company the motion picture became possible. Earlier film innovators and pioneers before Eastman are also highlighted.


Pre-Eastman Film Pioneers. 

Various people tried making motion pictures before George Eastman. Most notable were Louis Le Prince, a Frenchman living in the US, and William Friese-Green in England. However, the brilliant and innovative Thomas Alva Edison put an assistant to work with the Eastman film to produce moving pictures. By 1891 the invention became available for use. It was called the kinetoscope, designed for one person to view the pictures at a time.

Lumière Brothers, Auguste and Louis

Considered the real inventors of the modern movies were the French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière because the main issue that time was the film projector. In seeing a film, what they actually saw was an enormous number of separate photographs. Each still remained for one-sixteenth (for silent films) or one-twenty-fourth (for sound films) of a second before it moved on, and the next one took its place.

Because of what is known as "persistence of vision" in the eye, what seems to be seen were pictures that were actually moving. Stopping and starting the film so often would break the material of which it was made.

The Lumière brothers solved the problem. After watching how a sewing machine worked, and then using a somewhat similar type of claw movement to that which moves the cloth under the needle, it gave them idea and utilized the concept for the film. They managed to keep the film moving while actually stopping it many times per second in front of the lens. How did they do it? They kept the film slacked above and below the claw mechanism by means of a loop.

First Modern Movie

The first 'modern' movie was demonstrated again, by the Lumière brothers, in 1895. This was considered as the first 'cinema' and the first film show for the public which was given at the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895. Made by the Lumière brothers, the films were of a train entering a station, a rowing boat in a harbour, and workers coming out of the Lumière factory at Lyons.  More improvements followed.

Permanent Cinemas

The following year, the first 'real' permanent cinema was the Vitascope Hall, in New Orleans, USA, which was opened by William Rock in June 1896. It took another 14 years, in 1910, when the first 'picture palace' was opened at the Gaumont Palace in Paris, which could hold an audience of 5,000 people.



Source Credit:

MotionPictureImaging.Com.  Accessed December 19, 2013