Читать книгу Timeline Analog 1 - John Buck - Страница 8

In 1850 there were no cinemas.

No movie cameras. No rushes.

No editing. No editors.

Instead, audiences watched a Magic Lantern project one photograph onto a wall, that then dissolved into another. Viewers took turns to crank a small handle on a wooden box and stare through a slot to see a sequence of flickering still images. Typical were Philadelphians looking through Coleman Sellers' invention, the Kinematoscope. After recording images of his children working in his factory, Sellers mounted the photos on blades of a spinning paddle which, when spun, mimicked the motion of real life.

The lanterns proved popular, in part because they symbolized a growing belief in technology.

Innovation was a measure of national stature. During the late-nineteenth century devices like the electric furnace, the steam turbine, the automobile, wireless telegraphy, and the aircraft were invented.

Historians call it the 'golden age of invention'.

Author Peter Kobel notes:

"Something was certainly in the air. The turn of the century was a period of tremendous technological development, firing imaginations with visions of speed."

The English philosopher, Alfred Whitehead wrote:

"The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the method of invention."

Sir John Herschel, the son of respected British astronomer William Herschel, epitomized Whitehead's observation.

Kshitij Nagar described Herschel as:

"...the scientific superstar of the 19th century."

Herschel was a chemist and botanist when he started in an emerging field that the Scientific American (1862) called:

"Of all the arts, the one that seems miraculous is photography."

Writer Helmut Gernsheim concluded:

"Photography owes Herschel many valuable contributions..."

Even though the science, art, application, and practice of photography was invented cumulatively, Herschel is arguably the 'Father of Photography'. In rapid succession, he discovered that sodium thiosulphate stabilized a developed photograph and he then made the earliest extant photograph to glass. He even took time to clarify the words used by his peers to describe their work in patents and academic papers. Herschel coined the term photography as a more precise description and was the first to use the terms negative, positive and snapshot.

Among many ideas that he set forward was a device that could project a program of sequential images. Moving Pictures.

"What I have to propose may appear a dream, but it has at least the merit of being possible, and perhaps a realisable one...by an adequate sacrifice of time, trouble, mechanism and outlay."

He believed there were two major steps to make.

"1st..what photography has already realised, or we may be sure it will realise within some very limited lapse of time...and, 2ndly, that a mechanism is possible by which a prepared plate be presented, focussed, impressed, displaced, numbered, secured in the dark, and replaced by another within two or three tenths of a second."

Such an apparatus needed speed and flexibility, and the technology of nineteenth-century photography was neither. It was too rigid and too slow to rapidly expose a series of images. Let alone project them to an audience.

A key inventor in later years, Charles Francis Jenkins, recalls how many steps were actually needed:

"The motion picture is not a sort of Minerva-birth of inventive genius but like all notable achievements in mechanisms has had a long line of predecessors, for the difficult problem of recording and reproducing motion did not yield without much preliminary fumbling."

Jenkins was right.

The first to fumble was a sculptor. Frederick Scott Archer wanted a better photographic method than the existing calotype system, which used paper coated with silver iodide, to record images of his work. A typical single photographic exposure took him 40 minutes and produced a fuzzy image. After two years of experimenting, Archer debuted a new way to create a photo negative using the substance, collodion and wrote in a submission to The Chemist in 1851.

"My endeavour, therefore, has been to overcome these difficulties, and I find them from numerous trials that Collodion, when well prepared, is admirably adapted for photographic purposes as a substitute for paper."

Collodion consists of nitrocellulose (a flammable compound also called guncotton) dissolved in ethyl alcohol and then mixed with ether. It is transparent, membranous, and tough. Working in a dark room, Archer poured a collodion emulsion on to a glass plate and rocked it around to form a light-sensitive layer. In this method, the plate had to be exposed and developed within 20 minutes and kept moist throughout, or the collodion dried and produced a poor image. Archer's method became known as the 'wet plate process'.

"It presents a perfectly transparent and even surface when poured on glass, and being in some measure tough and elastic, will, when damp, bear handling in several stages of the process."

Archer's invention was the first practical, and reproducible photographic process. Author Séan MacKenna:

"Archer...understood the significance of collodion as a photographic binder and was the first to put together a workable method and publish it."

The process was much faster than the incumbent methods, delivering images in seconds rather than minutes. However, it was the quality of wet plate negative (above) that made them popular. Archer's invention became the dominant photo process for thirty years and was used by thousands of photographers across the world (below), but without a patent or financial backing, he died penniless.

Another Englishman, Alexander Parkes created a medium that eventually replaced Archer's wet plates, but that was not his original intent. Parkes set to create a substance that could be used to replace India rubber in hundreds of retail products. He experimented with nitrocellulose and created a plastic-like material that he called Parkesine.

"...my object is to employ collodion or its compounds for manufacturing purposes generally."

He also saw another use for Parkesine:

"...substituting for the sheets of glass a sheet of collodion of sufficient thickness to support the prepared film, a thick layer of collodion may be first formed on the glass and on this layer the film of prepared collodion may be produced and the picture taken thereon and suitably varnish or protected..."

Parkes started a company to produce Parkesine but poor pricing and product quality saw it bankrupt within two years. His works manager Daniel Spill continued research on Parkesine and patented a more stable version named Xylonite. Spill believed that if the product was 'whiter' it could be used as a replacement for ivory to make chess pieces and hair combs. Spill also saw a connection to photography and told the London Photographic Society that Xylonite could be:

...a flexible and structureless substitute for the glass negative supports...

An Ohio chemistry professor, Hamilton Smith discovered that he could pour collodion onto surfaces other than glass, and found decent results using tin.

The process was colloquially called 'tintype'.

Alma Davenport in The History of Photography: An Overview :

"A tintype could be coated, shot, developed and into the hands of the customer in less than six minutes."

Photography moved further ahead. If rigid and fragile glass plates were replaced, by tintypes or Xylonite, Herschel's motion picture camera could be realized.

The Belgian engineer Henry Désiré Du Mont had experimented with photographic devices for several years before he filed a patent for a camera that could move glass plates in quick succession in order to expose them for a photo sequence. It appears he never built a working moving pictures camera, but others soon did.

Around the same time, American John Hyatt (above) saw a newspaper advertisement for the billiard ball maker Phelan and Collender offering a $10,000 reward for a usable substitute for ivory, which was used to make billiard balls.

A printer by trade, Hyatt had knowledge of and access to chemicals and began experimenting with his brother Isaiah. The Hyatts knew of collodion but the results of their early experiments were only suitable enough to produce checkers and dominoes.

It is believed that one of the brothers accidentally overturned a bottle of collodion and the excess material congealed into a tougher film than expected. They used the discovery to make several billiard balls and added varying amounts of pyroxyline and camphor to the mix. The Hyatts had created a new product.

"...it was easy to mold under mild heat and pressure, and that, when cooled, became hard, strong, and easy to color. And, even better, it was cheap to produce."

The Hyatts added varying amounts of pyroxyline and camphor to a mix that in turn created a new product.

"...it was easy to mold under mild heat and pressure, and that, when cooled, became hard, strong, and easy to color. And, even better, it was cheap to produce."

They called the substance Celluloid from the chemical term Cellulose, and started to make false teeth and billiard balls. They formed the company, the Celluloid Manufacturing Company, and decided to concentrate on making bulk supplies of unprocessed celluloid. They sold celluloid to entrepreneurs, with sufficient capital, to make shirt collars, piano keys, brushes, mirror backs, billiard balls, cuffs and napkin rings.

However, it was another decade before a scientist at CMC made the discovery that linked celluloid to motion pictures.

Before 1871, Dr Richard Leach Maddox had used wet plates to record images of microorganisms in his laboratory but knew that the vapor from the chemicals was affecting his health. The other problem was that the process had to be undertaken in a dark room. If photographers went into the field, they needed to travel with a lightproof tent.

While Maddox decided to create a safer alternative that wet plates, he created the added benefit of portability. Maddox experimented with a different mix of silver nitrate and cadmium bromide to create a process that replaced wet plates with a “gelatin dry plate”. Like Archer before him, Dickson shared the knowledge of the dry plate process freely.

After further improvements were made to Maddox’s mix sensitivity by Charles Harper Bennett, the “dry plate” became an industry 'standard'. Not only were photographers now free from the wet plate fumes indoors but they no longer needed to take tents, chemicals and glass on location to prepare plates. They could buy pre-made dry plates, expose them at will and process them later.

Researcher Mike Kukulski notes:

"By happy circumstance, it was discovered that the gelatin (dry) plates were about 60 times more light sensitive than collodion plates."

The dry plates though were not easily produced.

George Eastman, a junior clerk at the Rochester Savings Bank (above), was obsessed with photography and bought a photographic kit with all the elements of the wet plate system. He described the size of the complete outfit in his diary:

"....it seemed that one ought to be able to carry less than a pack-horse load."

Eastman used his spare time to read publications like the British Journal of Photography and set up a workspace in his mother's kitchen. Over a two year period of "from 3 pm to breakfast" days, he created a better way to produce dry plates.

"At first I wanted to make photography simpler merely for my own convenience but soon I thought of the possibilities of commercial production."

Astutely he had identified that there was more money to be made in making plates than in taking photographs.

Reverend Hannibal Goodwin clergyman and amateur photographer, came to the same conclusion as Eastman.

Bulky and fragile glass plates were problematic. A native New Yorker, Goodwin graduated from Union College, Schenectady, then received training in a theological seminary. He became rector of the House of Prayer at Newark, where he used a stereopticon lantern while giving lectures to the 'young people' of his parish. He grew frustrated with the process of making new images for class, and as a self-taught chemist, experimented from a makeshift laboratory with nitrocellulose.

Goodwin's friend H.W. Hales wrote in Camera Craft (1900)

"...nearly all the time he could spare from his active duties were spent in his laboratory and here he often worked far into the night after a long day's work in the parish. I can remember his enthusiasm.

The research work was long and tedious, and the writer can well remember his delight when the first film with a good strong emulsion was produced."

The lure of solving photography's restraints had drawn in people as far apart and leading daily lives as different, as the clergyman Goodwin (above) and the sculptor Frederick Archer in London. However photography was still chemistry and mechanics. Henry Giardina wrote in The Atlantic:

"Before film was art, it was machinery."

In 1876, British political activist and inventor Wordsworth Donisthorpe tried to improve the machinery and built his own film camera. Author Stephen Herbert notes:

"Donisthorpe's Kinesigraph camera was evidently inspired by the 'square motion' wool-combing machine designed by his father, with the 'falling combs' replaced with falling photographic plates."

Donisthorpe (above) had a vision for the Kinesigraph:

"...to facilitate the taking of a succession of photographs at equal intervals of time, in order to record the changes taking place in or the movements of the object being photographed, and also by means of a succession of pictures so taken to give to the eye a representation of the object in continuous movement."

Donisthorpe, like Du Mont, had imagined a movie camera but was seemingly unable to build it. He needed a substance that could be produced in a continuous strip, loaded into a camera and then drawn past the lens to be exposed. The photo medium then needed to survive being taken out of the camera then developed, and printed without stretching and tearing.

The very product that was waiting to be discovered at the Hyatt's Celluloid Manufacturing Company.

Ever inventive, Donisthorpe suggested in Nature magazine that a combination of a Phonograph and a visual counterpart could create Talking Photographs. If photographs could be projected with a strong light, then:

"...with the assistance of the phonograph, the dialog may be repeated in the very voice of the actors."

Portrait artist turned photographer Charles-Antoine Lumière, was a father of four, in need of extra money to support his family. Lumière believed there was an opportunity in producing a better kind of dry plate and began experimenting with the help of his two sons, Auguste and Louis. Despite working 14-hour days in a makeshift factory, Lumière was unable to make a profit.

Through the 1880s, London was arguably still the world center of both finance and photography. George Eastman used his savings to take a seven-day boat trip to London, meet dry plate makers and lodge a patent for his plate-coating machine. He wrote in his diary:

"...no one will coat plates by hand after he has seen this."

Eastman planned to sell the rights to his UK patent to an established firm but instead, he returned to the US and started the Eastman Film and Dry Plate Company. Elizabeth Brayer wrote in her George Eastman biography:

"Word spread that a superior, relatively streak free product at a reasonable price was on the market."

With success Eastman was able quit his job at the bank and moved closer to his real goal: to bring photography to the masses.

"The idea gradually dawned on me, that what we were doing … was not merely making dry plates, but that we were starting out to make photography an everyday affair."

Despite patent disputes, business problems and technical issues Eastman ensured that photography became an everyday affair and his next work helped usher in the era of filmmaking.

Then two more inventor/entrepreneurs entered the frame.

John Carbutt emigrated to Canada, from England and most likely worked as a photographer for the Grand Trunk Railway. Carbutt eventually moved to, and opened a studio, in Chicago. He produced cartes-de-visite - small portraits used as calling cards in the 19th century.

"He also created nearly 200 stereographic views of Chicago, which, when seen through the proper apparatus, created a three-dimensional image of the pre-fire city."

After a decade of taking photographs across America (above), Carbutt moved to Wayne Junction, Philadelphia and managed the American Photo-Relief Printing Company. Author Peter Palmquist observed:

"This signaled a shift in his interest from studio and landscape photography to printing and experimental photography."

Carbutt then established Keystone Dry-Plate Works in 1878, and created various kinds of self-supporting transparent strips of cellulose nitrate film. He trialed emulsions to coat the strips.

The other inventor was Thomas Henry Blair.

Blair had grown up on a farm in Nova Scotia, Canada and eventually learned the skills of photography. Blair worked as a traveling ferrotype (tintype) photographer.

Blair emigrated to southwestern Massachusetts, at the age of 20, then created an all-in-one system called Blair’s Combination Dark Tent and Camera that dealt with the portability of photography. The package included a camera and a small tent for wet processing plates that folded into a box for traveling. Blair re-named the package the Tourograph:

"Its field of usefulness is intended for landscape work, wherein it certainly has no rival.

It does not necessitate covering the head...in fact, it is as easily and conveniently operated as could possibly be desired."

For the moment, both men focused on their small businesses. In future, Carbutt and Blair contributed to photography's evolution.

Born in Scotland then raised by migrant parents who took a covered wagon to Wisconsin; Peter, John and David Houston grew up in the rural town of Fox Lake.

With an interest in photography, Peter experimented with camera technology. Historians define the young man as a 'dreamer', and did not pursue his ideas commercially:

"...all was finished when he was able to show a complete and accurately functioning model."

In 1881, David Houston convinced his older brother, Peter to file a patent (above) for an invention that allowed the user to take:

“...a number of photographic views successively in a short time.”

The first roll film holder and roll film camera. Historian Ben Nemenoff notes:

“Flexible roll film had not yet been invented, but Houston anticipated that one day it would be.”

The holder consisted of two cylindrical reels, one on each side of the camera between the lens and the back door of the body. The reel on the photographer’s right would be empty; the one on the left would contain a roll of unexposed film.

Most likely unknown to Houston, someone invented flexible roll film - just a few months later.

At the Hyatt’s Celluloid Manufacturing Company in Newark, the long-standing principal chemist made a major discovery. John H. Stevens found that amyl acetate was a suitable solvent for diluting celluloid, which then allowed the stiff material to be made into a clear, flexible film. Stevens called his invention ‘transparent pyroxylin’ but in time it became - motion picture film.

In the years since patenting celluloid, the Hyatts had created equipment that could slice their firm celluloid blocks into thin sheets for sale. It could have easily sliced strips of celluloid for sale but the Hyatts didn't pursue the production of flexible film.

Two French photographers recognized the value of flexible film. François Fortier and M David. In June 1882, the British Journal of Photography shared with readers:

“M David exhibited sheets of celluloid, which he hoped will render service to travelers, and replace the heavy glass they are now obliged to carry about with them when traveling.”

George Eastman still wanted to create a lightweight camera that was small enough to use without a tripod and capable of creating reliable sharp focus photographs. He knew that to achieve this he needed to replace the typical glass plates with a flexible film.

The film that Fortier had spoken about, Stevens had stumbled upon, and Houston had envisioned for a roller camera.

Eastman employed local businessman, William Walker who had previously made a small pocket camera that made single exposures on 2-¾ x 3-¼" dry plates. Eastman worked on the flexible film while Walker worked on the hardware, a roll-holder and machine to apply the emulsion to film stock. After eighteen months of research, they had two products. A 'rollable' paper backed product, American Film (colloquially called 'stripping film' because of the paper backing that was stripped off during processing), and a machine that applied warm gelatin to sheets of paper, enabling the company to mass-produce American Film. Owners of existing cameras could load a strip of American Film, rather than glass plates:

"...and thus take 50 distinct photographs on one spool of paper film...in an hour!."

The process of using Eastman's film was not as simple as its advertising led users to believe. In fact, it was onerous. After exposing an image, the individual images had to be cut to size in a darkroom, developed, fixed, washed, squeegeed and then placed onto glass plates to create a negative for printing. The roll-holder and paper film combination was criticized for being a poor substitute for the quality of glass plates.

“...gray, sickly, looking prints...”

Eastman's problems escalated soon after.

David Houston, the holder of the film roll patent, wrote to Eastman's lawyer, and eventually, licensed the film roll patent rights, for $US700, to Walker who agreed to manufacture and market Houston’s camera across the country. Walker instead sold the rights to Eastman.

As Eastman launched the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company, Walker demonstrated the first Kodak amateur camera at the International Inventions Exhibitions in London.

"We shall be able to popularize photography to an extent as yet unimagined".

Without roll-film Eastman's dream product was still not 'as convenient as a pencil', so he employed a young graduate from the University of Rochester, Henry Reichenbach to help him create the roll-film that he needed. Eastman described him as:

"...an ingenious, quick-witted fellow..."

Around the same time, the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin had completed his research into a replacement for dry plates. Working from his attic, Goodwin had created a transparent flexible film-like material that photographers could use to record images more easily, and continuously.

He called it ‘photographic pellicule’ and filed for a patent.

“The object of this invention, is primarily to provide a transparent sensitive pellicle better adapted for photographic purposes, especially in connection with roller-cameras.”

Dr Robert Taft summarized the inventive achievement in Photography and the American Scene (1938) :

"The filing of Goodwin’s patent, which eventually turned out to be the basic patent of the film industry, was therefore an important milestone in photographic history."

However, Goodwin’s patent claims were too broad and the patent was rejected. In the following decade, Goodwin revised it seven times, based on suggestions from the US Patent Office.

Meanwhile, Eadweard Muybridge in Surrey, England, Ottomar Anschütz in Berlin, Étienne-Jules Marey in France and Henry Heyl in Philadelphia experimented in the field of projection.

A concept that ultimately became, cinema.

Heyl demonstrated the Phasmatrope, a device using 16 photographs arranged around the edge of a revolving disk moved intermittently by a spur gear. Muybridge used his experience in capturing over 100,000 motion photographs to create the Zoogyroscope in 1879.

Muybridge painted copies of 24 photographs on 16-inch discs and spun them rapidly to create the illusion of movement.

Author Leslie Wood observes:

"...the true importance of the pictures of the galloping horse lies in the fact that they were photographs of real and continuous movement and not posed pictures to counterfeit action."

Ottomar Anschütz spent a decade refining the Schnellseher, which displayed a series of photographs. The images were fixed on a spinning disk and intermittently lit from behind. Anschütz, like Muybridge, toured his device on a lecture circuit across Germany to interested scientific and photographic groups. It included a series of images called Sprechende Porträts, or Speaking Portraits.

French scientist and physiologist, Étienne-Jules Marey attended a demonstration of Muybridge’s next device, the Zoopraxiscope.

Marey was acutely interested in a better way to record the motion of people and animals to film. With his assistant Georges Demenÿ, Marey built a camera called the Chronophotographe that used a new technique. The Museum of Modern Art describes the camera in exhibition notes:

"Unlike Muybridge, who used a battery of cameras to make a sequence of separate frames (like the frames in a movie), Marey recorded the successive phases of motion on single plate."

While Marey did not directly contribute to the emerging moving pictures industry - he did not use celluloid film, nor perforated stock or a claw mechanism in his apparatus - author Robert Leggat states:

"These chronophotographs (multiple exposures on single glass plates and on strips of film that passed automatically through a camera of his own design) had an important influence on both science and the arts and helped lay the foundation of motion pictures."

Marey and Demenÿ record images of local gymnasts, including instructor Henri Joly, to test their device.

Meanwhile, Auguste Lumière returned from military service to find his father’s factory bankrupt. With his 17-year-old brother Louis, he invented a new dry plate process called Etiquette Bleue (Blue Label) which was both reliable and innovative. Within a decade the Lumières were producing 15 million dry photo plates a year. According to author Bertrand Lavédrine:

"In 1884 the (Lumière) factory had a dozen workers using modern manufacturing machines, often design by Louis himself, not only proficient as a chemist but also a talented design engineer."

The family company was now one of the largest photographic materials manufacturers in the world.

Louis Aime Augustin le Prince, the son of a French Army officer, moved from London to New York for business. He had been interested in ‘motion pictures’ for some time and sought out Muybridge’s photographs as reference.

le Prince used a workshop at his wife’s employer to build a device that had multiple lenses and an electromagnetic shutter.

Le Prince's ‘Receiver’ used two strips of light-sensitized gelatin exposed through two sets of eight lenses, sequentially triggered by electromagnetic impulses to create a series of images. Glenn Myrent wrote for the New York Times:

“...le Prince had created what he called a Receiver or single-lens parallax view-finder motion picture camera. It was fashioned from Honduras mahogany and weighed approximately 40 pounds. A light-sensitized strip of paper was advanced between a lens and a shutter by cranking a handle along one side.”

le Prince applied for a US patent in 1886 and then returned to the family home in Leeds, UK. Despite a lack of flexible film to use in the camera, the Frenchman was able to demonstrate his ‘Receiver’ camera before those who came later, like the Skladanowsky Brothers and Lumières.

Once his invention was made public, le Prince should have become the father of films. But it was not to be.

That role was claimed by Thomas Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history. Edison (above) was best known for creating the incandescent light bulb and the phonograph but was also famous as a shrewd and tough businessman.

"Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success."

Time Magazine later offered a caveat:

"...although his accomplishments spoke for themselves, Edison was equally prolific, and ambitious, in inventing myths to boost his reputation as a larger-than-life innovator. As a result, his inventions weren’t just scientific discoveries, but also prevarications."

Edison examined Marey's Chronophotographe device while in Europe, then hosted a visit by Eadweard Muybridge with his Zoopraxiscope at the West Orange labs. Sometime after, Edison directed his young engineer William Kennedy (W.K.) Laurie Dickson in 1887 to produce 'an instrument which does for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear‘.

Dickson recounted to SMPE:

"I pointed out to him (Edison) that in the first place I knew of no medium that was sensitive to take micro photographs at so rapid a rate while running continuously on the same shaft."

Edison reportedly replied

"We'll try it and it will lead to other things."

Over the next five years, Laurie Dickson worked to create the Kinetograph to record images and the Kinetoscope to screen them. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey notes:

"While Edison provided the resources, the vision for the invention, and the electromechanical knowledge used in designing motion picture devices, Dickson provided most of the knowledge of photography that those inventions drew on."

The scene was set for another decade of experimentation, legal disputes, patent fights, mysterious deaths and corporate bullying.

Roll-film patent holder David Houston arrived at George Eastman's office in Rochester. He was unhappy with the original license fees that Kodak had paid, and eventually settled with Eastman to 'buy him out root and branch' for $75,000 ($2m in today's terms). Eastman then paid out textile baron Darius Goff, who owned the patent for perforated film stock and acquired Samuel Turner's daylight-loading patent.

Film historian Mark Cousins describes the invention of filmmaking as:

"...a shambolic race."

In October 1888, Louis Aime Augustin le Prince set up his ‘Receiver’ camera in the backyard of a family home in Roundhay, Leeds. He loaded it with non-perforated film and directed his 'subjects' to walk in a circle. The images that he recorded survive as the Roundhay Garden Scene. The first moving picture made. le Prince spent the winter months building his ‘Deliverer’ projector with three lenses and three belts.

Photographic milestones and inventions began to overlap and leapfrog each other in quick succession. By 1882 Étienne Jules Marey had created a revolving disc camera with glass plates. He showed 40 sequential images at the Academie des Sciences in Paris:

"This method enables me to obtain the successive impressions of a man or of an animal in motion while avoiding the necessity of operating in front of a black background."

Fellow Frenchman Charles-Emile Reynaud built another way to screen images to an audience.

He took a child’s toy called the Praxinoscope and with modification turned it into a public projection system. The Théâtre Optique (below) is significant. Film historian Deac Rossell states its importance in the timeline of invention:

"...a significant and successful example of a moving picture apparatus using a continuously-running image band and an optical intermittent system"

After a decade manufacturing and selling glass photo plates, John Carbutt decided to experiment and reached out to the Hyatt’s Celluloid Manufacturing Company.

He ordered several thin sheets of their celluloid product. Carbutt coated them with his own dry plate emulsion and after a period of research, Carbutt presented his new product to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1888:

"...flexible negative films, the most complete and perfect substitute for glass I believe yet discovered on which to make negatives and positives."

While sheets of celluloid coated with emulsion were not unique, Carbutt’s product was the first commercial use of celluloid as a substitute for glass. The British photographer Colonel James Waterhouse, Assistant Surveyor-General of India noted:

"It has been reserved for our practical-minded Transatlantic cousins to be the first to show the way and to produce the flat transparent films which can be handled and treated in the same way as glass plates, but without their liability to fracture and their excessive weight and bulk."

Celluloid was far more portable than its glass plate predecessor and created the catalyst for amateur photography worldwide. He told the American Photographic Convention in Boston:

"The advantage of the celluloid film over the glass, I think, will be appreciated before long by the professional photographer."

Carbutt’s celluloid sheet film proved to be the key to building a device that was able to expose images in rapid succession. A movie camera.

Edison's assistant Laurie Dickson (far left) had already used raw samples from the Hyatt’s Celluloid Manufacturing Company, in nearby Newark, but:

"...it was heavy and stiff, making it difficult to handle and resistant of being bent or rolled into a coil."

Dickson needed a medium that was flexible enough to wrap around the cylinder that was intended to expose and store their prototype camera's images. He tested celluloid from Carbutt and other companies but soon encountered problems. The celluloid was sticking in the prototype camera.

Dickson wandered around the labs that housed Edison's previous inventions and found inspiration from the perforated paper of an automatic telegraph machine.

Within a week he had created a perforator that made two round holes in each film picture. The addition of sprockets gave them reliable exposure in camera and steady projection in the viewing machine.

"In less than a month, we had a good working camera."

At this point, the work of Carbutt, Edison, Goodwin and Eastman crossover.

Eastman had acquired Houston’s film-roll patent outright and wanted to finalize the film stock for the planned Kodak consumer camera. His chemist Henry Reichenbach experimented with ways to deliver a clear flexible film, capable of holding emulsion that was also resistant to stretching and folding.

Eastman and Reichenbach settled on a formula, and filed for patent protection but were rejected. Eastman withdrew the application but Reichenbach made changes to the patent and filed again, by himself. He specified the need for camphor in the flexible film mix.and the patent was approved.

Eastman launched the Kodak camera. For the first time, an easy to use camera with pre-loaded film was sold to amateurs and professionals alike. After exposing the images, buyers simply returned it to Eastman for processing and printing.

“Anybody who can wind a watch can use the Kodak camera.”

“You press the button, we do the rest.”

Samples of the Kodak film were displayed at the New York Camera Club's next meeting which Edison's engineer Laurie Dickson attended. He later wrote for the Society of Motion Picture Engineers:

"All these samples and experiments were made for us exclusively by Mr Eastman. Who took an ever-increasing interest in what we were doing."

Dickson experimented with joining strips of exposed celluloid together.

"...we had to devise certain essentials; such as a circular film cutter or trimmer, a perforator and a clamp with steady pins to fit the punch holes, to use in joining the film with a thin paste of the base dissolved in amyl acetate..."

One of the first examples of celluloid film editing.

Historians believe that Edison's doubt in the Kinetoscope grew, while Dickson realized the greater potential of moving pictures. Edison appears to have only ever considered the visual projection device to be an accessory to his successful sound Phonograph. Professor Peter Bauland, University of Michigan:

"Edison was primarily a tinkerer and businessman. It never occurred to him that movies could be art, and he originally had no idea for theatrical exhibition. With the kinetoscope, he really envisioned the VCR, the movie you watch by yourself."

Meanwhile, Reverend Goodwin, the amateur photographer who had invented a celluloid film in his attic, had missed a critical patent office grace period, which meant he was now required to pay a number of fees.

"...all of which must have been exceedingly burdensome to a man of limited means."

The Goodwin/Eastman patent fight was typical of the era.

Film historian Charles Musser called the emergence of cinema a:

"...history of greed, dishonesty, and ineptitude."

After a period where Dickson and his associates were diverted to work on other Edison projects, they returned to the Kinetograph. They still had problems with the thickness of the film stock. George Eastman wrote in his diary:

"The trouble with the film we have sent him is that the cogs tear the film slightly, as you will see by the enclosed, and gives blurred images."

Reichenbach tried to make the stock stronger and more photosensitive but was not successful. Without celluloid, it was near impossible for Dickson to continue work on a film camera.

"...the Kinetograph remained in status quo to my deep regret."

A few years earlier Thomas H. Blair had moved from Canada to the US and opened the Blair Tourograph & Dry Plate Company to sell his portable Tourograph camera:

“...for amateur photographers, college boys, and artists”

The package, with nine dry plates, cost $27.50 ($500 in today's terms). With continued success, Blair acquired a competitor Allen and Rowell Company and gained additional technology and skills. He used these to produce of a ‘film roll’ camera and celluloid film stock, based on stock bought from the Hyatts and an emulsion process tied to Goodwin’s patent.

Blair wanted to compete with George Eastman in the growing photography business, and as the only alternate reliable source of celluloid, he was able to connect with Laurie Dickson and provide rolls of film for the Kinetograph.

Like Blair, Birt Acres had shown great interest in photography and invention as a child. An Englishman born in the US but orphaned during the Civil War, Acres had studied art and science then returned to his native England where he experimented with photography and multi-lens cameras.

Acres gave lectures as a photographer, inventor, and innovator. His life soon intersected with Thomas Edison and filmmaking.

In April, Étienne-Jules Marey and assistant Georges Demenÿ had improved their chronophotograph camera used for recording human and animal movement. They debuted the Phonoscope to a small audience at the Académie des Sciences. Marey projected images, of a man speaking words and phrases, that were stored as thumbnails on a glass disk.

Demenÿ was then arguably inspired by the commercial potential of projection shows and wanted to use the Phonoscope to help the deaf learn to speak, with what he called Portraits Parlants or Speaking Portraits. The two men disagreed about future development and split.

Demenÿ set up his own laboratory and designed both a large format projector and a film transport mechanism that could claw filmstrips through a camera in an intermittent fashion or as it was called, 'dog movement'. He unsuccessfully approached the Lumiere brothers for celluloid supplies, and in turn, bought film from the European office of Thomas Blair.

Meanwhile, the man who had created the world’s first movie camera, and movies, disappeared without a trace in September 1890. Louis Aime Augustin le Prince sent his ‘Receiver’ and ‘Deliverer’ devices to New York in preparation for a public demonstration of his ''animated pictures''.

Le Prince spent a weekend with his brother Albert before getting on a train to Paris. The inventor of movie making never arrived. Despite investigations by detectives from three countries, Louis Aime Augustin le Prince, his documents and luggage were not found.

Author Patrick Samuel adds:

"Any hopes he had of being recognized as the true father of the motion picture were lost as he vanished before he was able to patent the new camera in Britain and demonstrate its operation in America."

le Prince’s death had an immediate impact.

By law, nobody could act on his patent for seven years unless le Prince returned or was proven to be deceased. French police were never able to find his body.

From 1890 until 1897, Le Prince's relatives could not legally commercialize his work.

Charles F. Jenkins of Richmond, Indiana was a key player in the invention of moving pictures and he even lived long enough to work on television transmission. As a rural Quaker youth, he invented a bean husker that removed the seed of the bean from the outer shell. Then designed a jack that raised wagons so that grease might be more easily applied.

After graduation, he worked the sawmills of Washington State and then landed a job with the U.S. Life Saving Service, today the U.S. Coast Guard. He used his spare time to design a moving pictures projector and after year of experimentation, he had a working device that screened images. Images that were too small to be viewed by a large audience.

Donald G. Godfrey observed in 'C. Francis Jenkins, Pioneer of Film and Television':

"It was challenging for lone inventors to make a living, fund their work, and promote acceptance of a new device, and Jenkins had to meet each of these challenges."

Around this time, May 1891, Mina Edison demonstrated a Kinetoscope unit to the National Federation of Women’s Clubs at her husband Thomas' laboratories. The New York Sun reported:

"In the top of the box was a hole perhaps an inch in diameter. As they looked through the hole they saw the picture of a man. It was a most marvelous picture."

Edison filed patents, began preparations to make film titles for viewing and set the Chicago World Expo 1893 as the debut date.

Meanwhile, Laurie Dickson was still negotiating with local companies to make lenses for the camera and liaising with George Eastman to perfect the celluloid stock. He trimmed the next batch of film from 40 mm (1 9/16 inch) to 34.925 mm (1 3/8 inch) and accidentally created the 35 mm industry standard.

Andre Gaudreault notes in American Cinema:

"A revised version of the camera, called the Kinetograph, was completed in 1892, using film in the modern 35 mm format, a frame one inch wide and three-quarters of an inch high with four perforations on either side to advance the film by engaging sprockets on a wheel."

Dickson filmed everything from circus bears to a staged sneeze by the chief mechanic, Fred Ott. Dickson also created an 'ecosystem of equipment' that included contact printers, developing tanks, drying racks and then constructed a purpose-built outdoor studio, The Black Maria - that rotated on wheels so that it could allow sun in at all times. In the coming fifteen year period, Edison Studios made more than 1200 film titles.

In Germany, two brothers had spent the previous three years traveling a magic lantern show with their father. In the summer of 1892, Max and Emil Skladanowsky built their own chronophotographic camera that used unperforated film in a worm-gear intermittent movement. Max shot forty-eight frames of Emil in August 1892.

As the Germans experimented, it seemed unlikely that the two great American inventors of the era would become further involved in motion pictures. The film pioneer George Eastman believed that his key employees were colluding with a competitor and on New Year's Day 1892 he wrote identical, brief letters to head chemist Henry Reichenbach, his brother Homer, Carl Passavant and Gus Milburn:

"Your services are no longer required by this company".

Eastman stopped film production while he searched for a replacement for Reichenbach. No film stock was available to Edison Labs or anyone else.

At the same time inventor Thomas Edison appears to have been stretched financially by the failing phonograph business and a downturn in the US economy.

Historian Paul Spehr believes that Edison was:

"...uncertain about the long-term market for the Kinetoscope...he was skeptical about what would happen after the novelty wore off."

Frustrated with the lack of progress on the Kinetograph, and Edison's general disinterest, Laurie Dickson spoke to fellow engineer Harry N. Marvin about making a small photographic device that could record, then show: “...just the knockout punch of a prize fight”.

Dickson showed Marvin a prototype pack of cards with sequential images that when flicked, imitated motion. Marvin shared Dickson’s sketches and cards with his friend Herman Casler, with whom both had previously worked with to create the Photoret- “a detective spy camera”.

Casler built a new photo device:

"...for exhibiting consecutively-taken pictures of objects in motion, to which I have applied the name “mutoscope”."

To avoid Edison suing them for patent infringement, the Marvin & Casler Company was then formed to make the Mutoscope for peep shows. At first, Dickson helped Marvin and Casler informally, then the three partners enlisted Elias Koopman, who had helped sell the Photoret, to lead with sales and marketing of the Mutoscope.

The Latham family in New York, who were peepshow exhibitors, were frustrated that Edison's Kinetoscope had not shipped and began work on their own projection device. It was to contain a simple, pivotal innovation.

The Latham's reached out to Laurie Dickson for advice.

Meanwhile, Charles Jenkins had built a 'better Kinetoscope', in his spare time, which he said was for:

'...the recording and reproduction of action'

Friends, fellow-boarders, and colleagues across Washington D.C. tested and trialed the device. Some even posed for Jenkins so he could photograph their diving, swimming and jumping actions. Jenkins wrote to the legendary inventor Alexander Graham Bell to seek funding for the device that he called Phenakistascope. Bell saw an immediate application for the device beyond cinema audiences - to create photographs of talking lips to assist in teaching the deaf. Bell encouraged Jenkins to continue with his 'simply ingenious mechanism'.

Jenkins then landed James Freeman as an investor/engineer and the two men started work on a new projection device, called the Phantoscope - a name used for all future devices. Jenkins believed that a consistent brand was a key element in his future success.

Around the same time, Ottomar Anschütz showed his Electrotachyscope, which presented the illusion of motion using serial photographs arranged on a spinning wheel, much like Dickson's pack of cards prototype, at the Chicago World's Fair. The device made an impression on Thomas Armat, a young man in the audience who was determined to become an inventor.

Armat soon teamed up with Jenkins in business.

After years of delays, Kinetoscopes began to appear around the world, first at the Brooklyn Institute, Brooklyn, New York then in Mexico and Stockholm. Five machines were bought by the MacMahon brothers screened films at the Haunted Swing Premises on Bourke Street in Melbourne, Australia.

In Europe, pioneering brothers pursued their visions.

Emil and Max Skladanowsky (above) progressed from making a basic film camera to a projector called the Bioskop that used two loops of 54mm film, one frame being projected alternately from each. This made it possible for the Bioscop to project at 16 frames per second, a speed sufficient to create the illusion of movement. The brothers worked through 1893 and 1894 making films to project.

It became apparent during that Thomas Edison had made a business mistake. He had not patented the Kinetoscope outside the US, which allowed anyone to make their own 35 mm viewer and cameras without fear of litigation. When Charles-Antoine Lumière met with his son Louis, and company engineer Eugene Moisson in 1894, he was holding a sample of film that he had received from an Edison Studios agent.

'This is what you should make because Edison sells it at insane prices."

The opportunity was two-fold. To build a 35 mm camera to shoot films and a 35 mm projector to screen them. An accomplished engineer in his own right, Louis Lumière visited fellow Parisian inventor Georges Demenÿ at the Villa Chaptal and viewed the devices he had produced.

Demenÿ had designed an intermittent projection method using a pair of claws, and a large projector apparatus but Lumière decided not to engage with him.

The paper based film stock that Lumière used for his prototype was not robust enough for his machinery nor sufficient for exposure, so he reached out to the Hyatt's Celluloid Company for celluloid roll film. When their base stock did not work, Lumiere tried samples from Eastman-Kodak and Thomas Blair.

Reliable, robust flexible film was still a problem that needed solving before motion pictures could advance.

After Edison's Kinetoscope was officially launched in London, two London film exhibitors approached Robert W. Paul, an electrical engineer, to exploit the patent loop-hole and make a 'Kinetoscope-clone'. They had six genuine Edison machines but needed six more to satisfy audience demand.

Paul had a local manufacture reverse-engineer the Kinetoscope and build replicas, called Theatrographs. Then Paul discovered that his clients had no films to project because Edison controlled the market by only supplying films to operators of authentic machines. He needed a filmmaker.

A friend introduced him to Birt Acres, the English photographer, and inventor, who seemed to be an ideal candidate. Already a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, Acres had devised a lantern slide system that could project a series of photographs in sequence creating the impression of motion. The two men agreed to make several short film titles.

In Paris, Charles Pathé had been successful in selling Edison's phonograph devices when he too realized that the US inventor had failed to patent his projection machines in Europe. Pathé bought several Kinetoscope-clones from Robert Paul, then looked for an engineer to build 35 mm cameras that he could use to make film titles.

Henri Joly had performed as a gymnast before Demenÿ's Phonoscope cameras and then persisted with his interest in engineering and photography. He met Pathé and convinced him that he could build a 35 mm camera.

Meanwhile, the American inventor Charles Jenkins had refined his imaging device so that it was able to project a larger image to an audience. He set up the Phantoscope (below) in June 1894 for an audience that included his parents, friends, and reporters from The Photographic Times, The New York Herald Tribune and The Richmond Telegram who wrote:

"As the last arc ceased to sputter and the window-shades rolled up, the people began to ask one another what they had seen. It was not certainly clear.

Although there had been the gesticulating girl ... from where had she come? How did she move? The viewers went behind the screen to impress the wall and ascertain there was no trickery, for there were no words to express it.”

Jenkins biographer Donald Godfrey:

"The film began rolling and life-sized images appeared depicting a dancing girl dressed in a butterfly costume. She danced across the screen to the amazement of the audience. As the ballerina lifted her skirt, to bow at the end of the performance, she revealed her ankle, and the ladies in the audience, all Quakers, stormed out of the store in protest over such a display of nudity. They went directly to the Church to pray for Jenkins soul. The men in the audience stayed on to see the show."

Jenkins returned to Washington and made a demonstration at the Pure Foods Seminar, screening life-size images onto a twenty-foot screen. He then filed the Phantoscope projector patent and completed work on his Kinetographic rotary-lens camera which would be used in concert to record motion pictures. Jenkins continued in his government job and attended the Bliss Electrical School at night in search of a way to solve the illumination problems he encountered with the Phantoscope.

He formed a fateful partnership with a fellow Bliss student, Thomas Armat. The two entrepreneurs decided to work together on the Phantoscope - for a period of fifteen years.

In late 1894, Thomas Edison discovered his protégé Laurie Dickson had assisted the Lathams to build their own peepshow projector and the young engineer soon left his employ. Dickson joined with Elias Koopman, Harry Marvin, and Herman Casler to form the K.M.C.D. syndicate. It made the cast-iron ornate Mutoscope machines which gave viewers the illusion of motion by showing flip-cards advanced by a hand crank.

Author David Crockwell notes:

"It is estimated that over 4,000 (Mutoscope) titles and 100,000 reels were printed and distributed during this period."

K.M.C.D. was renamed the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company with its headquarters at 841 Broadway, New York City. It became known simply as Biograph. With funds from the success of the Mutoscope, Casler began work on a film camera called the Mutograph and a projector, the Biograph.

To avoid infringing on Edison's patents, Dickson did not carry out any of the design work and Casler created a different film format. He used continuous movement friction rollers (not intermittent movement by sprockets) to move 68 mm film (not 35 mm) in the camera at 30 fps, not the standard 16 fps. By virtue of the Biograph projector using a much larger frame area than was customary at the time, images were sharper and better quality, though its operation required dedicated projectionists.

Christopher Beach wrote in A Hidden History of Film Style:

"As a result, Biograph's movies had a more defined image than Edison's, a feature apparent to early audiences."

The Smithsonian Institute summarizes Biograph’s films:

"Their inexpensiveness and short, often comical or sensational subjects allowed the machines a far longer life than the competing Edison Kinetoscope.

The company also found success in its production and projection of motion pictures, though its activity was mired by patent litigation involving Thomas Edison through the 1910s."

Biograph arguably became the world’s first dedicated movie production company. Ryan Lintelman from College of William and Mary explains Dickson’s role as producer and director:

"(Dickson) created a diverse slate of subjects, from simple but titillating films of strongmen and dancers to joke shorts like ‘Hard Wash’ and actualities like ‘United States Flag’ and ‘Bicycle Parade on Boulevard’."

1895 appears to be a pivotal year in film history.

In production, and projection.

As many in the peepshow and magic lantern industries waited for their official Edison Kinetoscopes to ship, such a device was probably already outdated. The need to screen to more than one person was obvious and Englishman Cecil Wray was one of the first to act when he patented an accessory that would allow a kinetoscope picture to be enlarged and projected onto a screen in January 1895.

The Latham family imagined many people wanted to watch an entire boxing match without needing to stop. Working in secret, Laurie Dickson and former Edison mechanic, Eugene Lauste created the Eidoloscope.

In April 1895, the Lathams debuted the new projector in New York with a screening of a boxing film Young Griffo - Battling Barnett. In order to accommodate the length of film, Dickson and Lauste had created what became known as Latham's Loop - a loop placed in the film just before it reached the camera's gate, thereby allowing the film to be rapidly paused and advanced without pulling directly on the rest of the film on the spool. While the invention did not impact editing directly, it allowed filmmakers to also film sequences whose only constraint was the size of a camera magazine.

The English duo of Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres had, by this time, created their own 35 mm camera which ran at 40 fps. Acres, an accomplished photographer, shot the first British motion picture film, Incident Outside Clovelly Cottage, Barnet. Richard Brown and Barry Anthony note in The Kinetoscope: A British History:

"Acres' first film was quite unlike anything that Edison or Dickson had produced...it depicted a slice of everyday life, photographed not on a shallow stage in a cramped studio but in a real street in the open air."

He followed with another groundbreaking film a few months later.

Meanwhile, Auguste and Louis Lumière had finalized their Cinématographe - a device that was "reversible". It was able to act as a camera or in reverse action, as a projector. If the owner wanted it could also serve as a contact printer for making prints from negatives. The Cinématographe was much lighter and mechanically simpler than Edison's Kinetoscope. The Lumières filmed and screened 'La sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumiere' to a small group of invitees at the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie in Paris.

In what was a technological race spread across the globe, the incumbent Edison had barely started as his rivals were close to finishing.

In September 1895, Charles Jenkins and Thomas Armat demonstrated the Phantoscope at the Cotton States and International Exposition in Atlanta. Initially, people were unsure about venturing into a dark room with strangers to see what the Phantoscope signage promised -"Moving Pictures". The young entrepreneurs changed the wording to - "Come Inside and Rest. And Look at Moving Pictures"

The Atlanta Journal wrote:

"This is unquestionably the most wonderful electric invention of the age."

The Baltimore Sun was even bolder:

"Mr Edison Outdone".

Despite the publicity, the two men were unable to draw audiences. Unknown to the journalists, the two Phantoscope projectors tore through the sprockets of Jenkins' films and screenings stopped.

The public instead flocked to booths for the Latham's Eidoloscope and Edison's Kinetoscope.

Meanwhile, the Skladanowskys ushered in the first cinema experience. The Berlin-based brothers possessed the three elements that ultimately defined filmmaking and distribution: a film camera, films to show and a projector.

Two local businessmen had seen a demonstration of the Skladanowskys' Bioscop device and booked it to screen short films at their Wintergarten Theatre.

The Skladanowskys could lay claim to the first paid public movie screening as the Bioskop event began on November 1st, 1895. The event continued for four weeks, with a total of 23 projections. The program, which included titles such as ‘Das Boxende Kanguruh’ (The Boxing Kangaroo) lasted for three hours and was held daily at 7.30pm.

The Bioskop was probably never set to dominate film screens as researcher Deac Rossell writes:

"Their film system, with its projection of alternate frames, was a hand-made operation equally incapable of commercialisation."

The leaders in the moving pictures industry remained Charles Pathé and Thomas Edison. Then the Lumières debuted the Cinematographie.

Louis Lumière, who was a devoted photographer, had spent much of the previous year perfecting the intermittent action of their new projector, the Cinématographe, and then filming more than 60 titles to project. The Cinématographe was a marvel of innovation, because it was light enough - at sixteen pounds - to be placed on a tripod, worked as both camera and projector, and being hand cranked it caused no problems with differing electrical power standards - because it required none.

In late 1895, Louis and Auguste debuted the Cinématographe at the Grand Café in Paris. Audiences were amazed at films like L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat, in which a train moves straight toward the camera point of view, set on the track. Author Rémi Fournier Lanzoni recounts most were oblivious to the movie process.

"Consequently, many of the panic-stricken audience members jumped out of their seats."

Elizabeth Ezra the author of George Méliès, wrote:

"...the social phenomenon of cinema was born."

Such was the popularity of the Cinématographe, that the daily revenue went above 2,500 francs ($10,000 in today's terms) and police were posted to maintain order in the queues. In the audience during those weeks were Léon Gaumont, Alice Guy-Blaché, Georges Demenÿ and Georges Melies. Four key players in the future of film.

Léon Gaumont's employer, a photographic supplier, had been ordered to cease trading, so he borrowed funds and bought the company. Gaumont retained the office assistant Guy-Blaché, who joined him at the Lumière's screening.

Georges Demenÿ had developed his own film equipment to help with the study of movement alongside Etienne Marey. Demenÿ had tried without success to interest the Lumières in his own projector apparatus.

Georges Méliès had bought the nearby Theatre Robert Houdini where he performed tricks and fantasy pantomime and displayed automats. He offered to buy a Cinématographe, but the Lumières declined.

The screening was successful and established the Lumières as the pre-eminent filmmakers and distributors in the world.

It had been 35 years since Sir John Herschel had offered up the idea of moving pictures.

Having already run a successful photo plate business, the Lumières were at least as commercially minded as Edison and Pathé and better placed to exploit the public's interest in cinema. The Lumières commissioned Jules Carpentier (an inventor and engineer in his own right) to build 25 Cinématographes, and the units shipped within months.

Brian Manley wrote in The History of Early Cinema:

"As the Lumières began opening theaters in New York, Brussels, London, and France, early filmgoers flocked and by early 1896, the short actualities of the Lumière Brothers were a part of popular culture."

Historian Tim Dirks explains:

"They soon became an escapist entertainment medium for the working-class masses and one could spend an evening at the cinema for a cheap entry fee."

The Lumières sent operators overseas to shoot and screen in excess of 1,000 short films and to sell the three-in-one camera-printer-projector. According to the director of Lyon’s Lumière Institut Thierry Fremaux:

"The Lumières wanted the cinema to be a witness of its time."

Another breakthrough film was screened, but not in France.

Across the English Channel, in the British city of Brighton, businessman Robert Paul, and photographer Birt Acres had teamed up to build Kinetoscope style projectors, and to create short films to project. Using film stock from Thomas Blair's London office they created Incident Outside Clovelly Cottage, Barnet; Boxing Match, the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race and then something that no audience had experienced before.

Rough Sea at Dover (1895) showed waves crashing into Admiralty Pier. A journalist described the first screening at the Royal Photographic Society in London.

"Some people in the front seemed to be afraid they were going to get wet…"

The 48-second Dover film consists of two distinct shots from different locations which were spliced together. The Era newspaper reviewed the spellbinding reaction:

"...the result is little short of marvellous."

Acres patented the Kinematographic apparatus, but only in his own name, and as a result had a non-amicable parting with R.W. Paul as his business partner.

The two young American entrepreneurs who had traveled to Atlanta with their Phantoscope did likewise. After failing in Atlanta, Thomas Armat took one machine to New York and demonstrated it to Edison's representatives while Charles Jenkins returned to his full-time job and filed a patent for a refined Phantoscope projector system, though the inventor noted the shortcomings:

"...this is too slow for all films except dancing girls and similar ones"

Around this time, Alfred Clark replaced Laurie Dickson as Edison's lead director and made Kinetoscope films whose themes were linked to historical events. Clark directed The Execution of Mary Stuart (1895) where he created a jump-cut between a shot of an actor’s head on an executioner’s block and that of a mannequin head falling into a basket to portray Queen Mary’s death. Filmmaker Matt Barry observed:

"Clark may very well have been the first filmmaker to utilize this technique."

The beheading may be filmmaking’s first creative edit.

After attending the Lumière's debut at the Grand Cafe in Paris, Léon Gaumont decided he would manufacture cameras and sell photographic supplies. It was something he was well prepared for. Gaumont had previously worked as clerk in the precision engineering firm of Jules Carpentier, where he pursued an interest in photography. He was then hired by the prestigious photographic distributor, Comptoir Général de la Photographie, which had eventually been court ordered into bankruptcy.

With the company re-named Gaumont, he purchased the rights to Georges Demenÿ’s 60 mm Chronophotographe camera and Phonoscope projector patents and commissioned a former Carpentier engineer, Léopold Decaux, to adapt the design to 35 mm so he could buy standard film stock from Thomas Blair rather than the obscure 60 mm.

Gaumont then hired camera operator Anatole Thiberville to make short films that could be used to promote the company's brand. While her boss had been inspired by the Lumière's machinery, office assistant Alice Guy-Blaché was interested in the medium. She recalled years later:

"The educational and entertainment values of motion pictures seemed not to have caught his attention. I thought that one might do better than those demonstration films...Gathering my courage, I timidly proposed to Gaumont that I might write one or two little scenes and have a few friends perform in them."

Guy-Blaché did so much more.

Hoping to regain momentum and control of the industry, while confronted with falling kinetoscope sales, Edison entered into lengthy discussions with the estranged business partners Charles Jenkins and Thomas Armat. Sensing that the two men from Washington possessed superior technology but were underfunded, he offered them barely adequate compensation, renamed the system Vitascope and enforced a marketing slogan - 'the latest invention of the Wizard Edison'.

With the new projection technology in place and a new portable camera complete, Edison’s film production team began making actuality style films in Brooklyn, Niagara Falls, and Coney Island.

Jenkins re-committed himself to invention and in 1895 published a short article in the Electrical Engineer to explain.

"Transmitting Pictures by Electricity"

Television.