Cinema Antecedents

First Photograph:
View from the Window at le Gras, Joseph Nicephore Niépce, June/July 1826

More information.

The Daguerreotype: Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, process announced publicly 7 January 1839	Portrait of Daguerre, 1844
First commercially-manufactured camera, the Giroux Daguerreotype camera
More information.

Louis Aimée Augustin Le Prince

First Film Experiments
Le Prince was a Frenchman, working in Leeds, UK. Recorded images on paper film (not celluloid):

Le Prince single-lens camera (Type-1 MkII, 1888), with viewfinder lens at top.
Source: E. Kilburn Scott, The Career of L. A. A. Le Prince.

Films from October 1888:

• Roundhay Garden Scene -- the garden of Le Prince's father-in-law, Joseph Whitley, Roundhay, Hunslet, Leeds, UK.
• Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge

Thomas Edison

Edison's Black Maria Studio, East Orange, NJ, circa 1895

Kinetoscope Parlor, circa 1895

Kinetoscope Mechanism

Advertisement for Edison Films and Projecting Kinetoscopes. The Moving Picture World, June 15, 1907, p. 242.(1)

Edison Kinetoscope Films

Auguste & Louis Lumière

Cinématographe

Cinématographe as a projector.
Source: Bernard Chardère, ''Les Lumière'', Payot Lausanne, 1985; Credits: Archives Château Lumière, via Wikipedia.

Cinématographe Film

First Public Screening, Admission Charged

28 December 1895, Salon Indien du Grand Café, Paris
The first 10 films (view QuickTime clips at L’Institut Lumière or 5 films on the TCF server)

1. La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon / Train Arriving in a Station (Lyon) - 46 seconds
2. La Voltige / Horse Trick Riders- 46 seconds
3. La Pêche aux poissons rouges / Fishing for Goldfish - 42 seconds
4. Le Débarquement du Congrès de Photographie à Lyon / Congress of Photographers - 48 seconds
5. Les Forgerons / Blacksmiths - 49 seconds
6. Le Jardinier (l'Arroseur arrosé) / The Gardener - 49 seconds
7. Le Repas (de bébé) / Feeding the Baby - 41 seconds
8. Le Saut à la couverture / Jumping Onto the Blanket - 41 seconds
9. La Place des Cordeliers à Lyon / Cordeliers Square (Lyon) - 44 seconds
10. La Mer / The Sea - 38 seconds

The Nickelodeon (beginning in 1905)

Interior of a nickelodeon theater in Pittsburg. It was claimed to be the first nickelodeon in the United States. The Moving Picture World, November 30, 1907. (1)

Bibliography

Burns, Paul T., The Complete History of the Discovery of the Cinema, www.precinemahistory.net

George Eastman House, Timeline of Photography, www.eastman.org/5_timeline/5_index.html

Library of Congress, History of Edison Motion Pictures: Fictional Films Dominate as Nickelodeons Emerge (1900-1907), memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edfict.html

L’Institut Lumière, "La première séance publique payante."

Le Prince films, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (UK).

Last revised: January 9, 2008 14:42