Precursors of film are concepts and devices that have much in common with the later art and techniques of cinema.
157-438: 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 would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video : it created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over
314-487: A motor -powered camera, the Kinetograph, capable of shooting with the new sprocketed film. To govern the intermittent movement of the film in the camera, allowing the strip to stop long enough so each frame could be fully exposed and then advancing it quickly (in about 1/460 of a second) to the next frame, the sprocket wheel that engaged the strip was driven by an escapement disc mechanism—the first practical system for
471-532: A sound-film system. The October 1893 Scientific American report on the Chicago World's Fair suggests that a Kinetograph camera accompanied by a cylinder phonograph was presented there as a demonstration of the potential to simultaneously record image and sound. The first known movie made as a test of the Kinetophone was shot at Edison's New Jersey studio in late 1894 or early 1895; now referred to as
628-406: A stroboscopic disc , so that they would appear as if moving in and out of the cardboard when animated. He supposed that this principle provided endless possibilities to make different 3D animations. He then introduced two methods to animate stereoscopic pairs of images, one was basically a stereo viewer using two stroboscopic discs and the other was more or less similar to the later zoetrope (but in
785-532: A $ 150 fee for overseas patents" and "saw little commercial value in the Kinetoscope." Given that Edison, as much a businessman as an inventor, spent approximately $ 24,000 on the system's development and went so far as to build a facility expressly for moviemaking before his U.S. patent was awarded, Rausch's interpretation is not widely shared by present-day scholars. Whatever the cause, two Greek entrepreneurs, George Georgiades and George Tragides, took advantage of
942-553: A 5,200-year old pottery bowl found in Iran, in an Egyptian mural approximately 4000 years old (found in the tomb of Khnumhotep at the Beni Hassan cemetery) and several other examples. However, it is very unlikely that these could be viewed in motion before the invention of stroboscopic animation in the 1830s. In 1825, the thaumatrope used a stroboscopic effect that made the brain combine incomplete pictures on either side of
1099-418: A British vaudeville contortionist), Bertoldi (table contortion) , Blacksmiths , Roosters (some manner of cock fight), Highland Dance , Horse Shoeing , Sandow ( Eugen Sandow , a German strongman managed by Florenz Ziegfeld ), Trapeze , and Wrestling . As historian Charles Musser describes, a "profound transformation of American life and performance culture" had begun. Twenty-five cents for no more than
1256-590: A Library of Congress educational website states, "The picture and sound were made somewhat synchronous by connecting the two with a belt", this is incorrect. As historian David Robinson describes, "The Kinetophone...made no attempt at synchronization. The viewer listened through tubes to a phonograph concealed in the cabinet and performing approximately appropriate music or other sound." Historian Douglas Gomery concurs, "[Edison] did not try to synchronize sound and image." Leading production sound mixer Mark Ulano writes that Kinetophones "did not play synchronously other than
1413-526: A Masonic temple) were substantially lower, about $ 700 a month, though presumably operating costs were lower as well. For each machine, Edison's business at first generally charged $ 250 to the Kinetoscope Company and other distributors, which would use them in their own exhibition parlors or resell them to independent exhibitors; individual films were initially priced by Edison at $ 10. During the Kinetoscope's first eleven months of commercialization,
1570-513: A camera instead of an audience. The famous movie pioneer Georges Méliès was a theatre owner and illusionist who treated film as a means to create spectacles that were even more impressive than stage shows, with lavish stage designs and special effects . The popular féerie theatre shows had often featured stage machinery for special effects (such as smoke, moving props, changeable set pieces) and magic tricks, but film allowed new tricks that were impossible to perform live on stage. A few years after
1727-499: A circa 30-second "moving tableau". Von Uchatius showed little interest in commercial shows and seems to have only performed private screenings at his home. From around 1853 until the 1890s in Paris, J. Duboscq marketed different models of a projection phénakisticope. It had a glass disc with a diameter of 34 centimeters for the pictures, and a separate disc with four lenses. The discs rotated at different speeds. Thomas Ross developed
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#17327796358541884-414: A cylinder (also referred to as a "drum"); the cylinder, made of an opaque material for positive images or of glass for negatives, was coated in collodion to provide a photographic base. An audio cylinder would provide synchronized sound, while the rotating images, hardly operatic in scale, were viewed through a microscope-like tube. When tests were made with images expanded to a mere 1/8 of an inch in width,
2041-418: A darkened room to project clearer images has been dated back to 1550. Giambattista della Porta 's very popular and influential Magia Naturalis helped popularize the camera obscura. In the 1558 first edition of the book series, Della Porta advised to use a convex mirror to project the image onto paper and to use this as a drawing aid. The 1589 second edition added a "lenticular crystal" or biconvex lens to
2198-509: A demon's head blowing on a glowing coal. Plateau stated that the illusion could be advanced even further with an idea communicated to him by Charles Wheatstone : a combination of Fantascope and stereoscope . Plateau believed two copies of his improved Fantascope could be adapted to deliver stereoscopic images to Wheatstone's reflecting stereoscope. He thought the construction of a sequential set of stereoscopic image pairs would be more difficult. Wheatstone had suggested using photographs on paper of
2355-470: A description of his forerunner to the magic lantern: the "Steganographic Mirror". This was a primitive projection system with a focusing lens and text or pictures painted on a concave mirror reflecting sunlight, mostly intended for long distance communication. Kircher also suggested projecting shadow puppets and living flies from the surface of the mirror. The book was widely distributed and may have offered some inspiration for Christiaan Huygens ' invention of
2512-597: A diluent that rendered cellulose nitrate into a clear gelatinous liquid. Collodion was first used medically as a dressing in 1847 by the Boston physician John Parker Maynard. The solution was dubbed "collodion" (from the Greek κολλώδης ( kollodis ), gluey) by Dr. A.A. Gould of Boston, Massachusetts. In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer , an Englishman, discovered that collodion could be used as an alternative to egg white (albumen) on glass photographic plates. Collodion reduced
2669-794: A few minutes of entertainment was hardly cheap diversion. For the same amount, one could purchase a ticket to a major vaudeville theater; when America's first amusement park opened in Coney Island the following year, a 25-cent entrance fee covered admission to three rides, a performing sea lion show, and a dance hall. The Kinetoscope was an immediate success, however, and by June 1, the Hollands were also operating venues in Chicago and San Francisco. Entrepreneurs (including Raff and Gammon, with their own International Novelty Co.) were soon running Kinetoscope parlors and temporary exhibition venues around
2826-414: A few years by competing systems, in particular those based on the so-called Geneva drive or "Maltese cross" that would become the norm for both movie cameras and projectors. The exhibition device itself—which, despite erroneous accounts to the contrary, never employed intermittent film movement, only intermittent lighting or viewing—was finally awarded its patent, number 493,426, on March 14. The Kinetoscope
2983-486: A film could run for almost 27 seconds. Hendricks identifies Sandow as having been shot at 16 fps, as does the Library of Congress in its online catalog, where its duration is listed as 40 seconds. Even at the slowest of these rates, the running time would not have been enough to accommodate a satisfactory exchange of fisticuffs; 16 fps, as well, might have been thought to give too herky-jerky a visual effect for enjoyment of
3140-498: A fishing line–type belt and a series of metal pulleys. It met with early acclaim, but poorly trained operators had trouble keeping picture in synchronization with sound and, like other sound-film systems of the era, the Kinetophone had not solved the issues of insufficient amplification and unpleasant audio quality. Its drawing power as a novelty soon faded and when a fire at Edison's West Orange complex in December 1914 destroyed all of
3297-446: A functional strip-based film viewing system. In the new design, whose mechanics were housed in a wooden cabinet, a loop of horizontally configured 3/4 inch (19 mm) film ran around a series of spindles. The film, with a single row of perforations engaged by an electrically powered sprocket wheel, was drawn continuously beneath a magnifying lens. An electric lamp shone up from beneath the film, casting its circular-format images onto
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#17327796358543454-432: A hand-crank. Naylor suggested tracing the pictures from readily available printed phenakisticopes, colouring them with translucent colours mixed with oil-varnish and covering the remaining portion of the disk with thick black paint. Nothing else has been found regarding Naylor's machine, so it remains uncertain whether it was ever even constructed. On 15 January 1847, Austrian magician Ludwig Döbler debuted his Phantaskop at
3611-523: A lecture amid a tour in which he demonstrated his zoopraxiscope , a device that projected sequential images drawn around the edge of a glass disc, producing the illusion of motion. Edison's laboratory was close by, and either or both Edison and his company's official photographer, William Dickson , may have attended. Two days later, Muybridge and Edison met at the Edison lab in West Orange and discussed
3768-642: A light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab in New Jersey also devised the Kinetograph , an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement , to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations. A Kinetoscope prototype
3925-414: A lot of them at a good profit. If we put out a screen machine there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines you could show the pictures to everybody in the country—and then it would be done. Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Under continuing pressure from Raff, Edison eventually conceded to investigate the possibility of developing
4082-507: A much improved view, with both eyes, of the opposite pictures. In 1861 American engineer Coleman Sellers II received US patent No. 35,317 for the kinematoscope , a device that exhibited "stereoscopic pictures as to make them represent objects in motion" on glass plates, linked together in a chain, and mounted in a box. In his application he stated: "This has frequently been done with plane pictures but has never been, with stereoscopic pictures". He used three sets of stereoscopic photographs in
4239-400: A new optical illusion that could represent any conceivable action depicted on the sections of a spinning disc (viewed in a mirror through slits in the disc). In January 1833, Plateau published a paper that introduced the principle of stroboscopic animation with a device that became known as the phenakistiscope . Several months after the publication of Plateau's paper, Simon Stampfer patented
4396-560: A patent given to the Mayer brothers for their "multiplicateur", which photographed multiple (identical) images onto a single plate (a technique that created the carte de visite format that was very popular in the 1860s). Claudet claimed to have invented something very similar in 1844, with results exhibited at the French Industrial Exposition of 1844 , including a self portrait that showed 12 sides of his face. Before
4553-522: A plain in the sunshine on the other side of the camera obscura wall. Little children and animals (for instance handmade deer, wild boars, rhinos, elephants, and lions) could perform in this set. "Then, by degrees, they must appear, as coming out of their dens, upon the Plain: The Hunter he must come with his hunting Pole, Nets, Arrows, and other necessaries, that may represent hunting: Let there be Horns, Cornets, Trumpets sounded: those that are in
4710-420: A practical reality. The Edison laboratory, though, worked as a collaborative organization. Laboratory assistants were assigned to work on many projects while Edison supervised and involved himself and participated to varying degrees. Dickson and his then lead assistant, Charles Brown, made halting progress at first. Edison's original idea involved recording pinpoint photographs, 1/32 of an inch wide, directly on to
4867-508: A projection system. He seconded one of his lab's technicians to the Kinetoscope Company to initiate the work, without informing Dickson. Tensions between the latter and Edison Company general manager William Gilmore had been running high for months; Dickson's eventual discovery of the Kinetoscope Company move appears to have been another central factor in his break with Edison that occurred in April 1895. The Kinetophone's debut excited little demand;
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5024-438: A projection variation. On 12 November 1852 he applied for an addition certificate to include his "Stéréoscope-fantascope, ou Bïoscope". Basically a combination of Plateau's standard fantascope and the stereoscope, it used two small mirrors in different angles next to each other that reflected stereoscopic image pairs (printed above each other on the stroboscopic disc) into the stereoscope viewer. Of three planned variations only one
5181-538: A public Kinetoscope parlor was opened by the Holland Bros. in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street—the first commercial motion picture house. The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill. The four-foot-tall machines were purchased from
5338-518: A rectangular image, 1 inch wide by 3/4 inch high, and four perforations on each side. Within a few years, this basic format—with the gauge known by its metric equivalent, 35 mm —would be adopted globally as the standard for motion picture film, which it remains to this day. The publication in the October 1892 Phonogram of cinematographic sequences shot in the format demonstrates that the Kinetograph had already been reconfigured to produce movies with
5495-411: A sequence with some duplicates to regulate the flow of a simple repetitive motion, but also described a system for very large series of pictures of complicated motion. In 1861, Samuel Goodale patented a hand-turned stereoscope device which rapidly moves stereo images past a viewer, in a fashion similar to the later mutoscope . In 1864, Dundee mechanic James Laing's motororoscope was presented to
5652-442: A small tent that was tied around the photographer's waist. Otherwise a wheelbarrow or a horse and covered wagon were used. Richard Hill Norris, a doctor of medicine and professor of physiology at Queen's College, Birmingham (a predecessor college of Birmingham University ), is generally credited with the first development of dry collodion plate when in 1856 he took out a new patent for a dry plate used in photography in which
5809-482: A small transparent phénakisticope system, called Wheel of life , which fitted inside a standard magic lantern slide. A first version, patented in 1869, had a glass disc with eight phases of a movement and a counter-rotating glass shutter disc with eight apertures. The discs depicted Ice Skaters, Fishes, Giant's Ladder, Bottle Imp and other subjects. An improved version had 13 images and a single slot shutter disc, and received British Patent 2685 on 10 October 1871. After
5966-407: A solid object, for instance a statuette. Plateau concluded that for this purpose 16 plaster models could be made with 16 regular modifications. He believed such a project would take much time and careful effort, but would be well wort it because of the expected marvelous results. Unfortunately, the plan was never executed, possibly because Plateau became almost completely blind by this time. Eventually
6123-577: A somersaulting monkey with arms attached to mechanism that made it tumble with dangling feet. Named after the Italian word for animated puppets, like marionettes or jumping jacks . Peep shows or "raree shows" were viewed through a hole in a box (sometimes fitted with a lens or magnifying glass) and were very popular in Europe from the 17th to 19th century. The view inside could be an exhibition of any kind of pictures, objects, puppets or other curiosities. It
6280-416: A speed as low as thirty pictures per second or even lower is sufficient." Indeed, according to the Library of Congress archive, based on data from a study by historian Charles Musser , Dickson Greeting and at least two other films made with the Kinetograph in 1891 were shot at 30 frames per second or even slower. The Kinetoscope application also included a plan for a stereoscopic film projection system that
6437-424: A stationary slide which showed the rest of the picture. In 1770 Edmé-Gilles Guyot detailed how to project a magic lantern image on smoke to create a transparent, shimmering image of a hovering ghost. This technique was used in the phantasmagoria shows that became very popular in several parts of Europe between 1790 and the 1830s. Other techniques were developed to produce convincing ghost experiences. The lantern
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6594-423: A third running horizontally the entire length of the theater, beneath the floor. Two years later, he supervised a press demonstration at the laboratory of a sound-film system of either this or a later design. In 1913, Edison finally introduced the new Kinetophone—like all of his sound-film exhibition systems since the first in the mid-1890s, it used a cylinder phonograph, now connected to a Projecting Kinetoscope via
6751-534: A total of just forty-five of the machines were built over the next half-decade. With Dickson's departure, Edison ceased new work on sound cinema for an extended period. On January 3, 1895, a British inventor received a patent for an unwieldy contraption meant to cast an enlarged Kinetoscope image onto a screen. Over the course of the year, even as new Kinetoscope exhibits opened as far afield as Mexico City, major cities across Europe, locales large and small around Australia, and Auckland, New Zealand, it became evident that
6908-492: A tradition that not only shaped cinema, but also home video , video games , computer-generated imagery , virtual reality and much more. The study of early media devices is also part of a wider and less teleological approach called media archaeology . Many of the devices that can be interpreted as precursors of film are also referred to as "philosophical toys", or " optical toys ". Unlike film and cinema, viewing these moving images always involves brevity and repetition. In
7065-463: A transversely connected iron wire. The lamp would typically show images of horses and horse-riders. Several scholars and inventors, like Giovanni Fontana (circa 1420), Leonardo da Vinci (circa 1515) and Cornelis Drebbel (1608) possibly had early image projectors before the invention of the Magic Lantern . Athanasius Kircher 's 1645 first edition of Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae included
7222-490: A trip of Edison's to Europe and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, for which he departed August 2 or 3, 1889. During his two months abroad, Edison visited with scientist-photographer Étienne-Jules Marey , who had devised a " chronophotographic gun "—the first portable motion picture camera —which used a strip of flexible film designed to capture sequential images at 12 frames per second. Upon his return to
7379-434: A twirling cardboard disc into one logical image. The effect was incorrectly attributed to a so-called " persistence of vision ", or " retinal persistence". The technology of the thaumatrope can also be used to display very simple and repetitive animation when each side of the card depicts one of two phases of an action. However, this option was only recognized much later. Joseph Plateau experimented with spinning discs since
7536-699: A version that used an endless band of pictures running between two spools that was intermittently lit by an electric spark. Desvignes' Mimoscope , received an Honourable Mention "for ingenuity of construction" at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. It could "exhibit drawings, models, single or stereoscopic photographs, so as to animate animal movements, or that of machinery, showing various other illusions." Desvignes "employed models, insects and other objects, instead of pictures, with perfect success." The horizontal slits (like in Czermak's Stereophoroskop) allowed
7693-407: A vertical position with horizontal slits). Czermak explained how suitable stereoscopic photographs could be made by recording a series of models, with an example of a growing pyramid. In 1858, Joseph-Charles d'Almeida published descriptions of two methods that he had successfully developed to project stereoscopic images. The first was an anaglyph method with red and green glasses, the second used
7850-450: A very small rectangular opening in the rim [rotates] directly over the film. An incandescent lamp...is placed below the film...and the light passes up through the film, shutter opening, and magnifying lens...to the eye of the observer placed at the opening in the top of the case." Robinson, on the other hand, says the shutter—which he agrees has only a single slit—is positioned lower, "between the lamp and film". The Casler–Hendricks description
8007-399: Is a lantern which on the inside has cut-out silhouettes attached to a shaft with a paper vane impeller on top, rotated by heated air rising from a lamp. The silhouettes are projected on the thin paper sides of the lantern and appear to chase each other. Some versions showed more motion with the heads, feet or hands of figures connected with fine iron wire to an extra inner layer and triggered by
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#17327796358548164-472: Is confirmed by photographs of multiple Kinetoscope interiors, two among the holdings of The Henry Ford and one that appears in Hendricks's own book. On February 21, 1893, a patent was issued for the system that governed the intermittent movement of film in the Kinetograph (though one was not granted for a version of the camera as a whole until 1897). The escapement-based mechanism would be superseded within
8321-404: Is initially colorless, it discolors over time. Non-flexible collodion is often used in theatrical make-up. Collodion was also the basis of most wet-plate photography until it was superseded by modern gelatin emulsions. In 1846, Louis-Nicolas Ménard and Florès Domonte discovered that cellulose nitrate could be dissolved in ether . They devised a mixture of ether as the solvent and ethanol as
8478-766: Is known as camera obscura or pinhole image. Its oldest known recorded description is found in Chinese Mohist writings dated to circa 400 BCE. However, people have probably witnessed and made use of occurrences of the phenomenon since prehistoric times. It has been suggested that distortions in the shapes of animals in many paleolithic cave paintings were possibly based on distortions seen in pinhole images formed through tiny holes in tents or in screens of animal hide. Some ancient sightings of gods and spirits, especially in temple worship, are thought to possibly have been conjured up by means of camera obscura or proto magic lantern projections. In Arab and European science
8635-435: Is known) published details and an illustration of his plan for a "Phantasmagoria for the projection of moving figures" (by then, the word "phantasmagoria" was often used for a type of magic lanterns). It would use an Argand lamp or Drummond light to project sequential images from a rotating glass disk. A shutter disk would be mounted on the same axis as the picture disk to have its holes coincide with pictures when turned with
8792-421: Is supported by the diagrams of the Kinetoscope that accompany the 1891 patent application, in particular, diagram 2. A side view, it does not illustrate the shutter, but it shows the impossibility of it fitting between the lamp and the film without a major redesign and indicates a space that seems suitable for it between the film strip and the lens. Evidently, that major redesign took place, as Robinson's description
8949-549: The Dickson Experimental Sound Film , it is the only surviving movie with live-recorded sound made for the Kinetophone. In March 1895, Edison offered the device for sale; involving no technological innovations, it was a Kinetoscope whose modified cabinet included an accompanying cylinder phonograph. Kinetoscope owners were also offered kits with which to retrofit their equipment. The first Kinetophone exhibitions appear to have taken place in April. Though
9106-752: The Mutoscope Company 's projector, the Biograph, was released; better funded than its competitors and with superior image quality, by the end of the year it was allied with Keith and soon dominated the North American projection market. Departing the Vitascope operation after little more than a year—in which the Edison Company's film-related business made a $ 25,000 profit—Edison commissioned the development of his own projection systems,
9263-656: The Phantasmascope and later as the Fantascope , clearly referring to phantasmagoria. Stampfer also suggested using the stroboscopic principle with "transparencies". It seemed a simple and logical next step, but in practice it turned out to be relatively complicated. Apart from mica and glass there were hardly any transparent materials that could be used and it took years before mechanisms were developed that enabled fluent animation to be projected. In 1843, T.W. Naylor (an experimenter from Newcastle about whom little else
9420-490: The Royal Scottish Society of Arts by a secretary. The device allowed a relatively large amount of stereoscopic pictures to be pasted on the inside of a "revolving web" with slits, transported over two rollers to pass in front of stereoscopic eyepieces. The rectangular openings of the viewer were adapted to the shape and size of the slits to avoid flaring and to reduce flicker. The demonstrated picture sequence
9577-460: The stroboscopic principle to alternately present each picture to the corresponding eye in quick succession. D'Almeida had started work on combining this method with the principles of the phénakisticope . On 7 April 1859, Belgian civil engineer and inventor Henri Désiré du Mont filed a Belgian patent for nine different versions of his Omniscope, of which most would show stereoscopic animation from stroboscopic discs or from cylinders with pictures on
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#17327796358549734-462: The zoetrope (1866), the flip book (1868) and the praxinoscope (1877), before its basic principle became the foundation for the apparent motion in film technology. In a private letter to Faraday from early 1833, Plateau suggested that the principle of his illusion could be further developed for use in phantasmagoria shows. Not much later, Plateau published his invention in England, initially as
9891-549: The 17th century in the shape of tents and eventually as portable wooden boxes with a viewing pane and a mirror to get an upright image. The camera obscura became increasingly popular as a drawing and painting aid for artists. The box type camera obscura was eventually turned into the photographic camera by capturing the projected image with plates or sheets that were treated with light-sensitive chemicals. The "trotting horse lamp" [走馬燈] has been known in China since before 1000 CE. It
10048-461: The Chamber shall see Trees, Animals, Hunters Faces, and all the rest so plainly, that they cannot tell whether they be true or delusions: Swords drawn will glister in at the hole, that they will make people almost afraid." Della Porta claimed to have shown such spectacles often to his friends. They admired it very much and could hardly be convinced by Della Porta's explanations that what they had seen
10205-495: The Eastman company for roll film. Three more orders for roll film were placed over the next five months. Only sporadic work was done on the Kinetoscope for much of 1890 as Dickson concentrated on Edison's unsuccessful venture into ore milling—between May and November, no expenses at all were billed to the lab's Kinetoscope account. By early 1891, however, Dickson and his new chief assistant, William Heise , had succeeded in devising
10362-587: The Edison facility in 1894. Just three months after the commercial debut of the motion picture came the first recorded instance of motion picture censorship . The film in question showed a performance by the Spanish dancer Carmencita , a New York music hall star since the beginning of the decade. According to one description of her live act, she "communicated an intense sexuality across the footlights that led male reporters to write long, exuberant columns about her performance"—articles that would later be reproduced in
10519-535: The Edison film catalog. The Kinetoscope movie of her dance, shot at the Black Maria in mid-March 1894, was playing in the New Jersey resort town Asbury Park by summer. The town's founder, James A. Bradley, a real estate developer and leading member of the Methodist community, had recently been elected a state senator: "The Newark Evening News of 17 July 1894 reported that [Senator] Bradley...was so shocked by
10676-592: The Eidoloscope debut. Before year's end, the Mutoscope team, using their Mutograph camera as a basis, developed a projector. At that point, North American orders for new Kinetoscopes had all but evaporated. By the beginning of 1896, Edison was turning his focus to the promotion of a projector technology, the Phantoscope , developed by young inventors Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat . The rights to
10833-669: The Exposition Universelle, Edison would have seen both the Théâtre Optique and the electrical tachyscope of German inventor Ottamar Anschütz. This disc-based projection device, also known as the Schnellseher ("quick viewer"), is often referred to as an important conceptual source for the development of the Kinetoscope. Its crucial innovation was to take advantage of the persistence of vision theory by using an intermittent light source to momentarily "freeze"
10990-565: The Fantascope. He combined the stroboscopic disc with aspects of his Anorthoscope to create a 27 cm translucent disc (oiled paper on a cardboard frame) that was lit from behind and had a stroboscopic 4-slit black metal shutter disc in front. The pictures, 16 in Plateau's example, were designed with a 4 to 5 anamorphic width to compensate the deformation of the resulting image. The animation could be seen with both eyes by several people at
11147-669: The Josephstadt Theatre in Vienna . On the front, the patented apparatus had 12 lenses with different pictures. Two lenses inside the machine were cranked around to direct limelight through each consecutive image. The eight scenes, mostly depicting circus or vaudeville acts, were designed by Mr. Geyling. He took the show to several other European cities until the spring of 1848. The multi-part optical entertainment could also feature dissolving views enhanced with an additional third image, chromatropes , or raree shows . The spectacle
11304-498: The July 22 Science and the October 21 Scientific American , argues that one Kinetoscope did make it to the fair. Robinson, in contrast, argues that such "speculation" is "conclusively dismissed by an 1894 leaflet issued for the launching of the invention in London," which states, "the Kinetoscope was not perfected in time for the great Fair." Echoing Hendricks's position, fair historian Stanley Appelbaum states, "Doubt has been cast on
11461-405: The Kinetoscope a reality. Edison would take full credit for the invention, but the historiographical consensus is that the title of creator can hardly go to one man: While Edison seems to have conceived the idea and initiated the experiments, Dickson apparently performed the bulk of the experimentation, leading most modern scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for turning the concept into
11618-487: The Kinetoscope also had a major impact in Europe; its influence abroad was magnified by Edison's decision not to seek international patents on the device, facilitating numerous imitations of and improvements on the technology. In 1895, Edison introduced the Kinetophone , which joined the Kinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph . Film projection, which Edison initially disdained as financially nonviable, soon superseded
11775-541: The Kinetoscope undoubtedly saw the Schnellseher under its deliberately deceptive name of The Electrical Wonder." Work proceeded, though slowly, on the Kinetoscope project. On October 6, a U.S. copyright was issued for a "publication" received by the Library of Congress consisting of "Edison Kinetoscopic Records." It remains unclear what film was awarded this, the first motion picture copyright in North America. By
11932-466: The Kinetoscope's individual exhibition model. Numerous motion picture systems developed by Edison's firm in later years were marketed with the name Projecting Kinetoscope . An encounter with the work and ideas of photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge appears to have spurred Thomas Edison to pursue the development of a motion picture system. On February 25, 1888, in Orange, New Jersey , Muybridge gave
12089-421: The Kinetoscope's popularity by adding sound to its allure, many in the field were beginning to suspect that film projection was the next step that should be pursued. When Norman Raff communicated his customers' interest in such a system to Edison, he summarily rejected the notion: No, if we make this screen machine that you are asking for, it will spoil everything. We are making these peep show machines and selling
12246-574: The Projectoscope and then multiple iterations of the Projecting Kinetoscope, eventually targeting semiprofessional and amateur customers. At its peak, around 1907–8, the Projecting Kinetoscope commanded 30 percent of US projector sales. In 1912, Edison introduced the ambitious Home Projecting Kinetoscope, which employed a unique format of three parallel columns of sequential frames on one strip of film—the middle column ran through
12403-604: The United States, Edison filed another patent caveat, on November 2, which described a Kinetoscope based not just on a flexible filmstrip, but one in which the film was perforated to allow for its engagement by sprockets , making its mechanical conveyance much more smooth and reliable. The first motion picture system to employ a perforated image band was apparently the Théâtre Optique, patented by French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud in 1888. Reynaud's system did not use photographic film, but images painted on gelatine frames. At
12560-531: The United States, may have been shot at this time (there is an unresolved debate over whether it was made in June 1889 or November 1890); known as Monkeyshines, No. 1 , it shows an employee of the lab in an apparently tongue-in-cheek display of physical dexterity. Attempts at synchronizing sound were soon left behind, while Dickson would also experiment with disc-based exhibition designs. The project would soon head off in more productive directions, largely impelled by
12717-401: The United States. New firms joined the Kinetoscope Company in commissioning and marketing the machines. The Kinetoscope exhibition spaces were largely, though not uniformly, profitable. After fifty weeks in operation, the Hollands' New York parlor had generated approximately $ 1,400 in monthly receipts against an estimated $ 515 in monthly operating costs; receipts from the Chicago venue (located in
12874-409: The appearance of a scene from day to night. Around 1800 more elaborate variations with lighting effects were exhibited in small theatres. The raree shows can be regarded as a precursor of toy theaters, dioramas , Chinese fireworks , dissolving views , the stereoscope and the kinetoscope . Several possible examples of very early sequential images can be found in paleolithic cave paintings , on
13031-417: The camera obscura was used in darkened rooms since circa 1000 CE to study light and especially sun eclipses. Very occasionally the camera obscura was thought of as an instrument for live projections of performances to entertain an audience inside a darkened room. Purportedly Arnaldus de Villa Nova did so at the end of the 13th century. The use of a lens in the opening of a wall or closed window shutter of
13188-426: The coarseness of the silver bromide emulsion used on the cylinder became unacceptably apparent. Around June 1889, the lab began working with sensitized celluloid sheets, supplied by John Carbutt, that could be wrapped around the cylinder, providing a far superior base for the recording of photographs. The first film made for the Kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in
13345-494: The company's Kinetophone image and sound masters , the system was abandoned. Edison kinetoscopic record of a sneeze (aka Fred Ott's Sneeze ) : filmed c. Jan. 2–7, 1894; 5 seconds at 16 fps Athlete with wand : filmed Feb. 1894; 37 seconds at 16 fps Sandow (the one of these four films to be shown at the April 14 commercial premiere): filmed Mar. 6, 1894; 40 seconds at 16 fps Carmencita : filmed c. Mar. 10–16, 1894; 21 seconds at 30 fps As noted, Hendricks (1966) gives
13502-408: The composition of complicated scenes. By experimenting with superimposition dissolving views were invented and became a separate popular magic lantern show, especially in England in the 1830s and 1840s. Dissolving views typically showed a landscape changing from a winter version to a spring or summer variation by slowly diminishing the light from one version while introducing the aligned projection of
13659-418: The date to establish priority for reasons of both patent protection and intellectual status. In any event, though film historian David Robinson claims that "the cylinder experiments seem to have been carried on to the bitter end" (meaning the final months of 1890), as far back as September 1889—while Edison was still in Europe, but corresponding regularly with Dickson—the lab definitely placed its first order with
13816-630: The disc to entertain his grandchildren and show them how he, an old professor, could turn around at great speed. The damaged disc is preserved in the collection of the National Technical Museum in Prague. On 5 February 1870, Philadelphia engineer Henry Renno Heyl presented three moving picture scenes with his Phasmatrope to 1500 persons at a church entertainment evening at the Philadelphia Academy of Music . Each scene
13973-478: The early days of film the word "photoplay" was quite commonly used for motion pictures. This illustrates how a movie can be thought of as a photographed play . Much of the production for a live-action movie is similar to that of a theatre play, with very similar contributions by actors , a theatre director / film director , producers, a set designer , lighting designer , costume designer , composer , etc. Much terminology later used in film theory and film criticism
14130-412: The end of 1851, Claudet claimed to have created a stereoscope that showed people in motion. The stereo viewer could show a motion of two phases repetitively. During the next two years, Claudet worked on a camera that would record stereoscopic pairs for four different poses (patented in 1853). Claudet found that the stereoscopic effect didn't work properly in this device, but believed the illusion of motion
14287-481: The end of the 18th century. Around the time cinema was developed, several theaters in Montmartre showed elaborate "Ombres Chinoises" shows that were very successful. The famous Le Chat noir produced 45 different shows between 1885 and 1896. Projection of images can occur naturally when rays of light pass through a small hole and produce an inverted image on a surface in a dark area behind the hole. This phenomenon
14444-439: The exposure time necessary for making an image. This method became known as the 'wet-plate collodion' or 'wet collodion' method. Collodion was relatively grainless and colorless, and allowed for one of the first high-quality duplication processes, also known as negatives . This process also produced two types of positives : the ambrotype and the tintype (also known as ferrotype ). The process required great skill and included
14601-743: The film premiered at the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company's parlor at 83 Nassau Street in New York. A half-dozen expanded Kinetoscope machines each showed a different round of the fight for a dime, meaning 60 cents to see the complete bout. For a planned series of follow-up fights (of which the outcome of at least the first was fixed), the Lathams signed famous heavyweight James J. Corbett , stipulating that his image could not be recorded by any other Kinetoscope company—the first movie star contract. In sum, seventy-five films were shot at
14758-422: The first for a "Kinetographic Camera", the second for the camera as well, and the third for an "Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects". In the first Kinetograph application, Edison stated, "I have been able to take with a single camera and a tape-film as many as forty-six photographs per second...but I do not wish to limit the scope of my invention to this high rate of speed...since with some subjects
14915-561: The first identifiable motion picture to receive a U.S. copyright. With commercial exploitation close at hand, on April 1, the motion picture operation was formally made the Kinetograph Department of the Edison Manufacturing Company , for which Edison appointed a new vice president and general manager: William E. Gilmore. Two weeks later, the Kinetoscope's epochal moment arrived. On April 14, 1894,
15072-463: The first time. In September, the first Kinetoscope parlor outside the United States opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first European Kinetoscope parlor was soon operating in Paris, at 20 boulevard Poissonnière. One of the owners was a business associate of Antoine Lumière's, whom he gave a strip from Barber Shop and a request for cheaper alternatives to the expensive Edison-produced films he
15229-452: The following steps: All of this was done in a matter of minutes, and some of the steps in (red) safelight conditions, which meant that the photographer had to carry the chemicals and a portable darkroom with him wherever he went. After these steps the plate needed rinsing in fresh water. Finally, the plate was dried and varnished using a varnish made from sandarac , alcohol and lavender oil . Dark tents to be used outdoors consisted of
15386-612: The glimpse of Carmencita's ankles and lace that he complained to Mayor Ten Broeck. The showman was thereupon ordered to withdraw the offending film, which he replaced with Boxing Cats ." The following month, a San Francisco exhibitor was arrested for a Kinetoscope operation "alleged to be indecent." The group whose disgruntlement occasioned the arrest was the Pacific Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose targets included "illicit literature, obscene pictures and books,
15543-470: The high-speed stop-and-go film movement that would be the foundation for the next century of cinematography . On May 20, 1891, the first invitational demonstration of a prototype Kinetoscope was given at the laboratory for approximately 150 members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs. The New York Sun described what the club women saw in the "small pine box" they encountered: In
15700-492: The idea reached instrumentmaker Jules Duboscq , who since 1850 very successfully marketed a stereoscope with lenses in collaboration with David Brewster (he also sold Wheatstone's version with mirrors, became the French publisher for Plateau's Fantascope and offered a projector on wheels for phantasmagoria, among many other optical instruments). Duboscq patented his version of the stéréoscope on 16 February 1852, with mention of
15857-481: The individual qualities of these media by presenting them as a small step in the development of a later invention. For instance: the flip book, zoetrope and phenakistiscope are very tactile devices that allow study and play by manipulating the motion by hand, while the projected image in cinema is intangible. Such devices as the zoetrope were not replaced by cinema: they were still used after the breakthrough of film. Furthermore, many early media examples are also part of
16014-524: The intermittent movement of the film strip behind [a camera] lens at considerable speed and under great tension without tearing ... stimulat[ing] the almost immediate solution of the essential problems of cinematic invention. Some scholars—in particular, Gordon Hendricks , in The Edison Motion Picture Myth (1961)—have argued that the lab began working on a filmstrip machine much later and that Dickson and Edison misrepresented
16171-521: The introduction of cinema, movies started to deviate more and more from live performances when filmmakers became creative with the unique possibilities that the medium provided: editing, close-ups, camera movements and special effects. The theatre form of puppetry has often been performed in front of cameras to create (children's) television shows, and is featured in some theatrical movies. It also spawned stop motion films, with puppets that seem to move all by themselves. The earliest projection of images
16328-414: The introduction of photography in 1839, it took circa 10 years before this new technique was occasionally combined with phénakisticopes and proto- zoetropes . Stereoscopic photography, which became very popular in the early 1850s, led to the belief that photography could be further developed into a perfect illusion of reality. Stereoscopic recordings with motion and colour were the logical next steps. Before
16485-419: The lens and thence through a peephole atop the cabinet. The device incorporated a rapidly spinning shutter whose purpose—as described by Robinson in his discussion of the completed version—was to "permi[t] a flash of light so brief that [each] frame appeared to be frozen. This rapid series of apparently still frames appeared, thanks to the persistence of vision phenomenon, as a moving image." The lab also developed
16642-538: The machine in the reverse direction from its neighbors. It was a commercial failure. Three years later, the Edison operation came out with its last substantial new film exhibition technology, a short-lived theatrical system called the Super Kinetoscope. Aside from the actual Edison Studios film productions, the company's most creative work in the motion picture field from 1897 on involved the use of Kinetoscope-related patents in threatened or actual lawsuits for
16799-444: The magic lantern in 1659. Moving images were possibly projected with the magic lantern since its invention; Christiaan Huygens' 1659 sketches for slides show a skeleton taking his skull off his neck and placing it back. Techniques to add motion to the painted glass slides were described since circa 1700. These usually involved parts (for instance limbs) painted on one or more extra pieces of glass moved by hand or small mechanisms across
16956-524: The mid-1820s, mainly in attempts to measure the duration of impressions of different colours. Along the way, in 1828, he had discovered a type of abstract animation by counter-rotating lines or slits in discs (in 1829 he further developed aspects of this principle into a first prototype of what would become the anorthoscope ). In 1830, Michael Faraday published a paper about several illusions that occur in rotating cogwheels and toothed discs, coincidentally repeating some of Plateau's findings. A note added to
17113-413: The necessary photographic emulsions and mechanics were fast enough to capture a photographic sequence in real-time, early attempts recorded simulated motion sequences by photographing different poses or positions separately. This technique would eventually become known as stop motion (for lifeless objects) or pixilation (for living actors). In 1849, Joseph Plateau published a note about improvements for
17270-493: The new Kinetoscope Company, which had contracted with Edison for their production; the firm, headed by Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon, included among its investors Andrew M. Holland, one of the entrepreneurial siblings, and Edison's former business chief, Alfred O. Tate. The ten films that comprise the first commercial movie program, all shot at the Black Maria and each running about 15 to 20 seconds, were descriptively titled: Barber Shop , Bertoldi (mouth support) (Ena Bertoldi,
17427-405: The new film. As for the Kinetoscope itself, there have been differing descriptions of the location of the shutter providing the crucial intermittent visibility effect. According to a report by inventor Herman Casler described as "authoritative" by Hendricks, who personally examined five of the six still-extant first-generation devices, "Just above the film,...a shutter wheel having five spokes and
17584-469: The opening. Already successfully operating a pair of London movie parlors with Edison Kinetoscopes, they commissioned English inventor and manufacturer Robert W. Paul to make copies of them. After fulfilling the Georgiades–Tragides contract, Paul decided to go into the movie business himself, proceeding to make dozens of additional Kinetoscope reproductions. In this pursuit, and to make films for both
17741-430: The original device and its knockoffs, Paul and photographer Birt Acres —briefly Paul's business partner—would originate a number of important innovations in both camera and exhibition technology. Meanwhile, plans were advancing at the Black Maria to realize Edison's goal of a motion picture system uniting image with sound. The Kinetophone (also known as Phonokinetoscope) was an early attempt by Edison and Dickson to create
17898-781: The other slide. Another use of dissolving views, projected with a triple lantern, showed a sleeping figure while images of dreams were superimposed above its head and dissolved from one scene to another. This is similar to the use of a dissolve in film. Between the 1840s and 1870s several abstract magic lantern effects were developed. This included the chromatrope which projected dazzling colorful geometrical patterns by rotating two painted glass discs in opposite directions. Occasionally small jointed shadow puppets had been used in phantasmagoria shows. Magic lantern slides with jointed figures set in motion by levers, thin rods, or cams and worm wheels were also produced commercially and patented in 1891. A popular version of these "Fantoccini slides" had
18055-405: The outside. One version was built inside a peep-box and had a lens focusing a light-beam to project the image on a frosted glass screen. Another design combined two zoetropes with Wheatstone's reflecting stereoscope in between. On 27 February 1860, Peter Hubert Desvignes received British patent no. 537 for 28 monocular and stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices. This included
18212-512: The paper discussed a disc that in addition to the teeth in the circumference had a different amount of holes regularly spaced across a circular zone closer to the center of the disc, representing the cogs of a smaller wheel. When looking into a mirror through the spaces in between the teeth, the holes appeared to be moving across the disc (or vice versa if looking through the holes). By November or December 1832, Plateau had experimentally managed to further develop Faraday's rotating cogs illusion into
18369-576: The phonograph turned on when viewing and off when stopped." While the surviving Dickson test involves live-recorded sound, certainly most, and probably all, of the films marketed for the Kinetophone were shot as silents, predominantly march or dance subjects; exhibitors could then choose from a variety of musical cylinders offering a rhythmic match. For example, three different cylinders with orchestral performances were proposed as accompaniments for Carmencita : "Valse Santiago", "La Paloma", and "Alma-Danza Spagnola". Even as Edison followed his dream of securing
18526-444: The popularity of the Kinetoscope with that of prizefighting . This led to a series of significant developments in the motion picture field: The Kinetograph was then capable of shooting only a 50-foot-long negative. At 16 frames per foot, this meant a maximum running time of 20 seconds at 40 frames per second (fps), the speed most frequently employed with the camera. At the rate of 30 fps that had been used on occasion as far back as 1891,
18683-507: The possibility of joining the zoopraxiscope with the Edison phonograph —a combination system that would play sound and images concurrently. No such collaboration was undertaken, but in October 1888, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the U.S. Patent Office announcing his plans to create a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear". It is clear that it
18840-449: The projection of each image; the goal was to facilitate the viewer's retention of many minutely different stages of a photographed activity, thus producing a highly effective illusion of constant motion. By late 1890, intermittent visibility would be integral to the Kinetoscope's design. The question of when the Edison lab began working on a filmstrip device is a matter of historical debate. According to Dickson, in mid-1889, he began cutting
18997-454: The purpose of financially pressuring or blocking commercial rivals. As far back as some of the early Eidoloscope screenings, exhibitors had occasionally shown films accompanied by phonographs playing appropriate, though very roughly timed, sound effects; in the style of the Kinetophone described above, rhythmically matching recordings were also made available for march and dance subjects. While Edison oversaw cursory sound-cinema experiments after
19154-407: The reports of [the Kinetoscope's] actual presence at the fair, but these reports are numerous and circumstantial." Noting that the fair featured up to two dozen Anschütz Schnellsehers—some or all of a peephole, not projection, variety—film historian Deac Rossell asserts that their presence "is the reason that so many historical sources were confused for so long.... [A]nyone who made a clear claim to see
19311-457: The sale of morphine, cocaine, opium, tobacco and liquors to minors, lottery tickets, etc.," and which proudly took credit for having "caused 70 arrests and obtained 48 convictions" in a recent two-month span. The Kinetoscope was also gaining notice abroad. On July 16, 1894, it was demonstrated publicly for the first time in Europe at the 20 boulevard Montmartre newsroom of Le petit Parisienne , where photographer Antoine Lumière may have seen it for
19468-399: The sale of viewing machines, films, and auxiliary items generated a profit of more than $ 85,000 for Edison's company. One of the new firms to enter the field was the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company (no relation to Raff and Gammon's Kinetoscope Company); the firm's partners, brothers Otway and Grey Latham, Otway's friend Enoch Rector , and their employer, Samuel J. Tilden Jr., sought to combine
19625-454: The same speed for Sandow . However, he lists both Fred Ott's Sneeze and Carmencita at 40 fps (he does not discuss "Athlete with wand") (p. 7). The Library of Congress catalog does support Hendricks's assertion that no Kinetoscope film was shot at 46 fps. Precursors of film Precursors of film are often referred to as precinema , or 'pre-cinema'. Terms like these are disliked by several historians, partly because they seem to devalue
19782-479: The same time, with greatly improved image quality. A screen behind the translucent disc blocked the light, except for a cutout trapezoid area that corresponded with the space where the figures were visible at the proper position. A gear system for the rotation ensured that the image would appear in the right area. Plateau used the translucency of the disc to create light effects in the designs. One extant disc, made in collaboration with painter Jean Baptiste Madou , shows
19939-490: The setup. In this edition, Della Porta also described a way to scare people at night by projecting a scary image lit by torches in one room onto a white sheet or other surface in the dark nascent room. In a more elaborate daytime use of the camera obscura Della Porta proposed to project hunting scenes, banquets, battles, plays, or anything desired on white sheets. Trees, forests, rivers, mountains "that are really so, or made by Art, of Wood, or some other matter" could be arranged on
20096-453: The sport. The Kinetograph and Kinetoscope were modified, possibly with Rector's assistance, so they could manage filmstrips three times longer than had previously been used. On June 15, a match with abbreviated rounds was staged between boxers Michael Leonard and Jack Cushing at the Black Maria. Seven-hundred-and-fifty feet worth of images or even more were shot at the rate of 30 fps—easily the longest motion picture to date. Several weeks later,
20253-475: The stiff celluloid sheets supplied by Carbutt into strips for use in such a prototype machine; in August, by his description, he attended a demonstration of George Eastman 's new flexible film and was given a roll by an Eastman representative, which was immediately applied to experiments with the prototype. As described by historian Marta Braun, Eastman's product was sufficiently strong, thin, and pliable to permit
20410-501: The success of The Great Train Robbery (1903) and other Edison Manufacturing Company productions, it was not until 1908 that he returned in earnest to the combined audiovisual concept that had first led him to enter the motion picture field. Edison patented a synchronization system connecting a projector and a phonograph, located behind the screen, via an assembly of three rigid shafts—a vertical one descending from each device, joined by
20567-689: The system had been acquired by Raff and Gammon, who redubbed it the Vitascope and arranged with Edison to present himself as its creator. The Vitascope premiered in New York in April and met with swift success, but was just as quickly surpassed by the Cinématographe of the Lumières, which arrived in June with the backing of Benjamin F. Keith and his circuit of vaudeville theaters . The Eidoloscope's prospects, meanwhile, were crippled by projection deficiencies and business disputes. In September 1896,
20724-416: The system was going to lose out to projected motion pictures. In its second year of commercialization, the Kinetoscope operation's profits plummeted by more than 95 percent, to just over $ 4,000. The Latham brothers and their father, Woodville , had been developing a film projection system, retaining the services of former Edison employee Eugene Lauste and benefiting secretly from Dickson's assistance while he
20881-468: 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. It bowed and smiled and waved its hands and took off its hat with the most perfect naturalness and grace. Every motion was perfect.... The man was Dickson; the little movie, approximately three seconds long, is now referred to as Dickson Greeting . On August 24, three detailed patent applications were filed:
21038-464: The turn of the year, the Kinetoscope project would be reenergized. During the first week of January 1894, a five-second film starring an Edison technician was shot at the Black Maria; Fred Ott's Sneeze , as it is now widely known, was made expressly to produce a sequence of images for an article in Harper's magazine. Never intended for exhibition, it would become one of the most famous Edison films and
21195-495: The very similar stroboscopische Scheiben ("stroboscopic discs") in Austria. Stampfer mentioned several possible variations, including a cylinder (similar to the later zoetrope ) as well as a long, looped strip of paper or canvas stretched around two parallel rollers (somewhat similar to film) and a theater-like frame (much like the later praxinoscope theatre). The stroboscopic disc was followed by other animation toys, such as
21352-464: The world's first, known as the Black Maria . Despite extensive promotion, a major display of the Kinetoscope, involving as many as twenty-five machines, never took place at the Chicago exposition. Kinetoscope production had been delayed in part because of Dickson's absence of more than eleven weeks early in the year with a nervous breakdown. Hendricks, referring to various accounts, including ones in
21509-447: Was a boxing match between Young Griffo and Charles Barnett, approximately eight minutes long. European inventors, most prominently the Lumières and Germany's Skladanowsky brothers, were moving forward with similar systems. Another challenge came from a new "peep show" device, the cheap, flip-book -based Mutoscope —another venture to which Dickson had secretly contributed while working for Edison and to which he devoted himself following
21666-472: Was a screening on 16 March 1870 at the Franklin Institute . Collodion Collodion is a flammable, syrupy solution of nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol . There are two basic types: flexible and non-flexible. The flexible type is often used as a surgical dressing or to hold dressings in place. When painted on the skin, collodion dries to form a flexible nitrocellulose film. While it
21823-574: Was actually produced, but it wasn't very successful commercially. Only one extant disc is known, from the Joseph Plateau estate kept at the Ghent University. It has stereoscopic sets of a sequence of photographic images of a machine in action. No original viewing device has resurfaced, but parts of it are known from an illustration in an 1853 advertisement. In 1851, Antoine Claudet wrote to French magazine La Lumière in response to
21980-517: Was already applied for theatre, such as mise en scene . Some forms of theatre, such as cantastoria , also utilize sequentially ordered pictures in a way that anticipates cinema. Early motion picture shows were often screened in existing theatre venues and accompanied by live narration, music, and sound effects, thus combining the new medium with theatrical traditions. Many early films by Edison 's company, Max Skladanowsky and other pioneers, consisted of popular vaudeville acts performed in front of
22137-411: Was apparently abandoned. Early in 1892, steps began to make coin operation, via a nickel slot, part of the mechanics of the viewing system. Before the end of the year, the design of the Kinetoscope was essentially complete. The filmstrip, based on stock manufactured first by Eastman, and then, from April 1893, by New York's Blair Camera Co., was 1 3/8 inches wide; each vertically sequenced frame bore
22294-618: Was clearly a hypothetical allegory. Shadow puppetry was possibly developed in India around 200 BCE, but also has a long history in Indonesia (records relating to Wayang since 840 CE), Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, China (records since around 1000 CE) and Nepal. It later spread to the Ottoman empire and seems not to have reached Europe before the 17th century. It became very popular in France at
22451-460: Was first semipublicly demonstrated to members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs invited to the Edison laboratory on May 20, 1891. The completed version was publicly unveiled in Brooklyn two years later, and on April 14, 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history took place in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture,
22608-480: Was handheld to move the projection across the screen (which was usually an almost invisible transparent screen behind which the lanternist operated hidden in the dark). A ghost could seem to approach the audience or grow larger by moving the lantern towards the screen, sometimes with the lantern on a trolley on rails, just like a tracking shot in films. Multiple lanterns not only could make ghosts move independently, but were also occasionally used for superimposition in
22765-477: Was host to half a dozen Kinetophone parlors and London to nearly as many, a venue with five machines opened in Sydney, Australia. By January 3, 25,000 filmgoers had paid the one-shilling fee (roughly equivalent to 25 cents, the same price for five film viewings as in the New York debut). Dissemination of the system proceeded rapidly in Europe, as Edison had left his patents unprotected overseas. The most likely reason
22922-412: Was intended as part of a complete audiovisual system: "we may see & hear a whole Opera as perfectly as if actually present". In March 1889, a second caveat was filed, in which the proposed motion picture device was given a name, Kinetoscope, derived from the Greek roots kineto- ("movement") and scopos ("to view"). Edison assigned Dickson, one of his most talented employees, to the job of making
23079-549: Was most likely done in primitive shadowgraphy dating back to prehistory. It evolved into more refined forms of shadow puppetry , mostly with flat jointed cut-out figures which are held between a source of light and a translucent screen. The shapes of the puppets sometimes include translucent color or other types of detailing. Plato seemed to hint at shadow puppetry in his Allegory of the Cave (circa 380 BCE) but no other signs of shadow play in ancient Greece are known and Plato's idea
23236-506: Was mostly well-received, but the flickering quality of the stroboscopic images was occasionally criticized. Franz von Uchatius developed two different phenakisticope-based projectors. An 1851 oil lamp version only managed to project weak six inch images. A later limelight variation was demonstrated to the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1853, with plans to construct a similar apparatus with 100 lenses for 100 images to create
23393-427: Was photographed with wooden models, with a bit of white wool round a bendable wire representing smoke coming from a cottage chimney, a paper flag and mill fans of wood. The instrument "excited considerable interest" at this presentation. Around 1865, a disc with nine oval photographic images of Jan Evangelista Purkyně (1787–1869) turning around was probably created by the physiologist himself. Purkyně reportedly used
23550-413: Was projected from its own a intermittent spur geared rotating disk with 16 photographic images. The only known extant disk repeated four images of a waltzing couple four times and was played with appropriate musical accompaniment of a 40-person orchestra. A disk depicting a Brother Jonathan speech was voiced live by an actor, and the other disc showed a jumping Japanese acrobat. Heyl's only known other show
23707-442: Was quite common that a showman would provide dramatic narration, while occasionally pulling a string or operate another type of simple mechanism to change backgrounds, move figures around, or introduce new elements. Leon Battista Alberti is thought to have created the earliest impressive peep show boxes around 1437. His painted pictures may have been lit from behind with special effects as seen in later examples, for instance to change
23864-532: Was ready to be unveiled. The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope was held not at the Chicago World's Fair , as originally scheduled, but at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893. The first film publicly shown on the system was Blacksmith Scene (also known as Blacksmiths ); directed by Dickson and shot by Heise, it was produced at the new Edison moviemaking studio,
24021-502: Was really an optical trick. Although there seem to be few records of the camera obscura being used for such elaborate spectacles, the scarier kind of "magic" was probably more or less commonplace by the start of the seventeenth century, mainly with actors portraying the devil, demons, witches or ghosts. In 1572, the oldest known suggestion for the camera to become mobile was described as a lightweight wooden hut to be carried around on two wooden poles. More practical solutions followed in
24178-467: Was showing. Along with the stir created by the Kinetoscope itself, this was one of the primary inspirations for the Lumière brothers , Antoine's sons, who would go on to develop not only improved motion picture cameras and film stock but also the first commercially successful movie projection system. In mid-October, a Kinetoscope parlor opened in London. At the end of November, by which point New York City
24335-544: Was still in Edison's employ. A few weeks after he and Edison fell out, Dickson openly participated in an April 21 screening of the Latham group's new Eidoloscope for at least one member of the New York press, which historians describe as the first public film projection in the U.S. On May 20, in Lower Manhattan , the world's first run of commercial motion picture screenings began: the Eidoloscope show's prime attraction
24492-425: Was successful. Instrument maker Francis Herbert Wenham (or possibly a lesser known Frederic Wenham) would claim in 1895 that he had already made a series of ten stereoscopic images to be viewed on two phenakistiscopes in 1852. In 1855, Johann Nepomuk Czermak 's published an article about his Stereophoroskop and other experiments aimed at stereoscopic moving images. He mentioned a method of sticking needles in
24649-584: Was the technology's reliance on a variety of foreign innovations and a consequent belief that patent applications would have little chance of success. An alternative view, however, used to be popular: The 1971 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica , for instance, claims that Edison "apparently thought so little of his invention that he failed to pay the $ 150 that would have granted him an international copyright [ sic ]." As recently as 2004, Andrew Rausch stated that Edison "balked at
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