Pioneers of Cinema – 1895

The Lumiere brothers Auguste Marie Loise Lumiere and Louis Jean Lumiere were manufacturers of photography equipment known for creating their cinematography motion picture system. This invention leads to the first-ever showing of a motion film in all of history.

Backstory 

The Lumiere brothers were born in Besancon, France, to Jeanne Josephine Costille Lumiere and Charles-Antoine Lumiere. Charles-Antoine (their father) began his career as a portrait painter but later began practising as a photographer. Eventually, he opened a small business in photographic plates based in Lyons. Later we will learn that this career change leads to the invention of motion picture film. Both Auguste and Lois attended La Martiniere, a technical school in Lyon, where they studied and excelled in their education.

History In The Making

Louis Lumiere found inspiration in his father business and began experimenting with his father equipment. In the process, Lois invented a new dry plate method of film development at just 17 years old! This brought great success to his fathers business. It even led to the opening of a second factory in the Lyons suburbs, where they produced around 15 million plates a year.

In 1894 Antoine Lumière attended the exhibition of Edison’s Kinetoscope in Paris. Upon arriving, he showed his sons a length of film he had received from the exhibition.He suggested they invent a cheaper alternative to the peephole camera and its bulky camera counterpart, the Kinetograph.One downfall of the Kinetoscope was that only one viewer could watch the motion picture at a time. Antoine urged Auguste and Louis to develop a way to project film onto a screen, where multiple people could enjoy a film simultaneously. Auguste began experimenting, and by the beginning of 1895, the brothers came up with a new device called the Cinématographe.

The Cinématographe

The Cinématographe was a device that could record, develop and project motion pictures and is known as the first official film camera. It was smaller and lighter than the Kinetograph and weighed about eleven pounds. In Comparison to Edison’s device, it projected film at a speed of 16 frames per second, while Edison’s projected film at 48 frames per second. It was powered with a hand crank and was significantly less noisy to operate. 

In 1895, The Lumière brothers used the Cinématographe to shoot footage of workers heading home after a long day of work at the factory. They named the film “La Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière”, which translates to Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory. It was first shown at an industrial meeting in Paris. This film is significant because it is considered the very first motion picture.

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lumiere-brothers