Institut Lumière - CINEMATOGRAPHE Camera

Cinematograph or kinematograph is an early term for several types of motion picture film mechanisms. The name was used for

movie camera A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either on an image sensor or onto film stock, in order to produce a moving image to project onto a movie sc ...

s as well as

film projector A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying motion picture film by projecting it onto a screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras. Modern ...

s, or for complete systems that also provided means to print films (such as the Cinématographe Lumière).

History

A device by this name was invented and patented as the "Cinématographe Léon Bouly" by French inventor Léon Bouly on February 12, 1892. Bouly coined the term "cinematograph," from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

for "writing in movement."Abel, Richard. Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2004. Due to a lack of money, Bouly could not develop his ideas properly and maintain his patent fees, so the

Lumière brothers Lumière is French for 'light'. Lumiere, Lumière or Lumieres may refer to: * Lumières, the philosophical movement in the Age of Enlightenment People *Auguste and Louis Lumière, French pioneers in film-making Film and TV * Institut Lumière, ...

were free to adopt the name. In 1895, they applied it to a device that was mostly their own invention. The Lumière brothers made their first film, ''

Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory ''Workers Leaving The Lumière Factory in Lyon'' (french: La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon), also known as ''Employees Leaving the Lumière Factory'' and ''Exiting the Factory,'' is an 1895 French short black-and-white silent documenta ...

'' (''Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon''), that same year. The first commercial, public screening of

cinematographic Cinematography (from ancient Greek κίνημα, ''kìnema'' "movement" and γράφειν, ''gràphein'' "to write") is the art of motion picture (and more recently, electronic video camera) photography. Cinematographers use a lens to foc ...

films happened on 20 May 1895 at 156 Broadway, New York City, when the " Eidoloscope", invented by

Woodville Latham Major Woodville Latham (1837–1911) was an ordnance officer of the Confederacy during the American Civil War and professor of chemistry at West Virginia University. He was significant in the development of early film technology. Woodville Lath ...

and

Eugene Lauste Eugène Augustin Lauste (17 January 1857 in Montmartre, France – 27 June 1935 in Montclair, New Jersey) was a French inventor instrumental in the technological development of the history of cinema. By age 23 he held 53 French patents. He emigra ...

was presented. Nonetheless, this has often been incorrectly attributed to the first Lumière show on 28 December 1895 at

Salon Indien du Grand Café Le Salon Indien du Grand Café was a room in the basement of the Grand Café, on the Boulevard des Capucines near the Place de l'Opéra in the center of Paris. It is notable for being the place that hosted the first commercial public film screenin ...

in Paris, which was organised by the Lumière brothers.Louis Lumière, ''The Lumière Cinematograph''. In: This presentation featured ten short films, including a new version of ''Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory''. Each of these early films was 17 meters long (approximately 56 feet), which, when hand cranked through a projector, ran approximately 50 seconds.

Invention

Louis Lumière and his brother Auguste worked together to create a

motion-picture A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

camera superior to

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

kinetograph The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...

, which did not have a projector. The Lumières endeavored to correct the flaws they perceived in the kinetograph and the kinetoscope, to develop a machine with both sharper images and better illumination. The Cinématographe weighed only , which allowed for ease of transportation and placement. As well, the Cinématographe was manually operated by a hand-crank, as opposed to Edison's electrically powered camera, which was not readily portable. Furthermore, while only one person at a time could use Edison's kinetoscope for viewing through an eyepiece-- an early model of a

viewfinder In photography, a viewfinder is what the photographer looks through to compose, and, in many cases, to focus the picture. Most viewfinders are separate, and suffer parallax, while the single-lens reflex camera lets the viewfinder use the main ...

. The Cinématographe could project an image onto a screen so a large audience of people could view images simultaneously.Gomery, Professor Douglas, and Clara Pafort-Overduin. Movie History: A Survey. Taylor & Francis, 2011. The Cinématographe produced a sharper projected image than had been seen before due to its design, in which a kind of fork held frames behind the lens in place using the perforations in the sides of the film strip. In 1897, the Lumières further added to their invention by using a glass flask of water as the condenser to concentrate the light onto the film frame and to absorb heat. The flask also acted as a safety feature, as the light would no longer focus on the flammable film if the glass were to break due to overheating or accident.Cinematograph, Louis Lumière. “1936 the Lumière Cinematograph.” SMPTE Journal 105, no. 10 (October 1, 1996): 608–611.

Popularity

After the success of the Lumières's initial public screening in 1895, the Cinématographe became a popular attraction for people all over the world. The Lumière brothers took their machine to China and India and it was enjoyed by people of all classes and social standings. The Cinématographe was used to show films in nickelodeons, where even the poorest classes could pay the entry fee. It was exhibited at fairs and used as entertainment in

vaudeville Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition ...

houses in both Europe and the United States. While vaudeville is typically associated with the working and middle classes, the machine also found its way into more sophisticated venues, where it appealed to the artistic tastes of high society.

Notes

Explanatory notes

References

Ang, Tom. 2019. Photography: History, Art, Technique, 2005-2019.

External links

Adventures in Cybersound
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cinematograph Audiovisual introductions in 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumière History of film