Lights! Camera! Action! How the Lumière brothers invented the movies

In 1870, as France reeled from invasion in the Franco-Prussian war, Antoine Lumiere moved his family from the hazardous eastern border of the country to the city of Lyon. A portrait painter and award-winning photographer, he opened a small business in photographic plates in his new home.

In 1894 Antoine attended a Paris exhibition of Thomas Edison and William Dickson’s Kinetoscope, a film-viewing device often referred to as the first movie projector. However, the Kinetoscope could show a motion picture to only one person at a time. The individual viewer had to watch through a peephole; Antoine wondered if it were possible to develop a device that could project film onto a screen for an audience. When he returned home from Paris, Antoine encouraged his sons to begin working on a new invention.

One year later, the brothers had succeeded, and the Lumière Cinématographe was patented. With its perforated, 35mm-wide film that passed through a shutter at 16 frames per second, the hand-cranked Cinématographe established modern standard film specifications. Similar to the mechanics of a sewing machine, the Cinématographe threads the film intermittently and more slowly than the Kinetoscope’s 46 frames per second, creating a quieter machine and one that made the images appear to move more fluidly on screen. In addition to expanding Edison’s one-person peephole view to an audience, the Cinématographe was also lighter and portable. The bulk of the Kinetoscope meant that films could only be shot in a studio, but the Lumières’ invention offered operators the freedom and spontaneity to record candid foot age beyond a studio’s walls.

So we have the Lumiere brothers to thank for all the miserable cretins at the Oscars? Thanks, guys.

In all seriousness, these brothers were amazing. Pure genius as well as very astute business. Just look at the mechanical, chemical, and business genius, all within a single DECADE. The sure speed of all these developments is breathtaking.

1894 - Antoine attended a Paris exhibition of Thomas Edison and William Dickson’s Kinetoscope

1895 - Lumière Cinématographe was patented. With its perforated, 35mm-wide film that passed through a shutter at 16 frames per second, the hand-cranked Cinématographe established modern standard film specifications. Similar to the mechanics of a sewing machine, the Cinématographe threads the film intermittently and more slowly than the Kinetoscope’s 46 frames per second, creating a quieter machine and one that made the images appear to move more fluidly on screen. In addition to expanding Edison’s one-person peephole view to an audience, the Cinématographe was also lighter and portable. The bulk of the Kinetoscope meant that films could only be shot in a studio, but the Lumières’ invention offered operators the freedom and spontaneity to record candid foot age beyond a studio’s walls.

December 28, 1895 — At the Grand Café in Paris, heir directorial debut was La sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). While today this premiere would be considered rather prosaic viewing—as its title suggests, the movie simply showed workers leaving the Lumière factory—the clarity and realism of the black-and-white, 50-second film created a sensation.

1896 — Lumières opened Cinématographe theaters in London, England; Brussels, Belgium; and New York City, showing the more than 40 films that they had shot of everyday French life.

Late 1890s — The Lumières trained camera operators to use the invention and then travel all over the world. They showed the Lumières’ films to new audiences and also recorded their own footage of local events in the places they visited. Gabriel Veyre set out for Central America, the veteran soldier Félix Mesguich filmed in North Africa, and Charles Moisson headed for Russia, where he filmed the pomp and splendor of the crowning of the last tsar, Nicholas II, in 1896. Between 1895 and 1905, the Lumières would make more than 1,400 films, many of which have been preserved to this day.

1903 — The Lumière brothers’ solution patented the Autochrome Lumière color film process involved covering a glass plate with a thin wash of tiny potato starch grains dyed red, green, and blue. Autochrome remained the most widely used photographic plate capable of capturing color for more than 30 years

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