The Invention of Cinematography
The cinema was invented during the 1890s, during the industrial revolution.
On June 19, 1872, under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named "Sallie Gardner" in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The experiment took place on June 11 at the Palo Alto farm in California.
Roundhay Garden Scene, filmed by Louis Le Prince on October 14, 1888 in Roundhay, Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, UK is now known as the earliest surviving motion picture.
On June 21, 1889, William Friese-Greene was issued patent no. 10131 for his 'chronophotographic' camera. It was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using perforated celluloid film.
In 1891 W. K. L. Dickson, working under the direction of Thomas Edison, designed a fully capable camera called the Kinetograph. It took a series of instantaneous photographs on standard Eastman Kodak photographic emulsion coated on to a transparent celluloid strip 35 mm wide.
Video Documentaries
- Edison - The Invention of the Movies: 1891-1918
- A Trip To The Moon & The Extraordinary Voyage
- Landmarks of Early Film
- D.W. Griffith: Years of Discovery
- D.W. Griffith: The Father of Film
- Melies the Magician
- BBC Four - Paul Merton's Weird and Wonderful World of Early Cinema