A TIMELINE ON THE HISTORY OF FILM.
(from the discovery of photography to the contributions of Georges Méliès)
(this article is a collection of information on major milestones about the birth of motion pictures as we know it, taken from various sites across the web and organized.)
Ibn Al-Haytham (945–1040), widely regarded as “the father of modern optics”, invented Camera obscura — the precursor to the pinhole camera - the natural optical phenomenon that occurs when an image of a scene at the other side of a screen is projected through a small hole in that screen as reversed and inverted on a surface opposite to the opening
The camera obscura box was developed further into the photographic camera in the first half of the 19th century.
1826
- Nicéphore Niépce takes the first known photograph in history, View from the Window at Le Gras.
1839
- Daguerreotype process or daguerreotypy is invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, which was the first publicly available photographic process, widely used during the 1840s and 1850s.
1832
- Joseph Plateau’s Phenakistiscope and Simon von Stampfer’s Stroboscope are invented that creates an optical illusion of movement by mounting drawings on the face of a slotted, spinning disk.
1834
- Zeotrope or Wheel of Life is invented.
1871
- Dr. Richard L. Maddox invents dry plate, an improved type of photographic plate.
1877
- Charles-Émile Reynaud improves the Zoetrope idea by placing mirrors at the center of the drum. He called his invention the Praxinoscope.
- Eventually he created the “Théâtre Optique”, a large machine based on the Praxinoscope, but was able to project longer animated strips.
1878
- Eadweard Muybridge, to settle the question of whether a galloping horse ever had all four of its feet off the ground, photographed a horse in fast motion using a series of 12 cameras controlled by trip wires, known as The Horse in Motion.
Muybridge spent the rest of his career refining his methods and photographing the locomotion of a wide range of animals, as well as people performing a variety of actions and movements. His work was widely used for reference by scientists and artists, and was a precursor to the invention of motion pictures.
1879
- Muybridge invents Zoopraxiscope, an early device for displaying moving images and is considered an important predecessor of the movie projector.
- George Eastman invents an emulsion coating machine which enables the mass production of photographic dry plates.
1880
- Eastman begins to commercially manufacture dry plates for photography.
- Eadweard Muybridge holds a public demonstration of his Zoopraxiscope.
1881
- George Eastman establishes the Eastman Dry Plate Company.
1882
- Eastman begins experimenting with new types of photographic film.
- French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey invents the chronophotographic gun, a camera shaped like a rifle that photographs twelve successive images each second.
1885
- George Eastman and Hannibal Goodwin each invent a sensitized celluloid base roll photographic film to replace the glass plates then in use.
1887
- French artist Louis Le Prince’s 16-lens camera is made in the United States and the film ‘Man Walking Around a Corner’ is filmed using it this year, later proven is not a film but a series of photographs.
1888
- Eastman registered the trademark Kodak.
- Louis Le Prince, becomes the first person to shoot a moving picture sequence, used his single-lens to shoot ‘Roundhay Garden Scene’, widely considered as the oldest surviving film.
- Thomas Alva Edison meets with Eadweard Muybridge to discuss adding sound to moving pictures. Edison begins his own experiments.
1889
- George Eastman’s celluloid base roll photographic film becomes commercially available.
- Wordsworth Donisthorpe invents the Kinesigraph, which photographs a round image on 68 mm film.
1891
- Thomas A. Edison and William Dickson invents Kinetoscope, forerunner of the motion-picture film projector.
- On May 20, Thomas Edison holds the first public presentation of his Kinetoscope for the National Federation of Women’s Clubs
- On August 24, Thomas Edison files for a patent of the Kinetoscope.
1892
- The Eastman Company becomes the Eastman Kodak Company.
1893
- Thomas Edison builds America’s First Movie Studio, the Black Maria.
- ‘Blacksmith Scene’ is made and presented by Thomas Edison, the first Kinetoscope film shown in public exhibition.
1894
- Thomas Edison experiments with synchronizing audio with film; the Kinetophone is invented which loosely synchronizes a Kinetoscope image with a cylinder phonograph.
1895
- In France, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, design and built a lightweight, hand-held motion picture camera called the Cinématographe. They discover that their machine can also be used to project images onto a large screen. The Lumière brothers create several short films at this time that are considered to be pivotal in the history of motion pictures.
- On December, The Lumière brothers have their first paying audience at the Grand Café Boulevard des Capucines in Paris — this date is considered the debut of the motion picture as an entertainment medium. This history-making presentation consisted of the following 10 short films, including ‘Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory’.
1896
- On January, ‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’ is shown in public, legend says that the audience was so overwhelmed by the moving image of a life-sized train coming directly at them that people screamed and ran to the back of the room. Whether or not it actually happened, the film undoubtedly astonished people unaccustomed to the illusion created by moving images.
- French magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès begins experimenting with the new motion picture technology, developing many early special effects techniques, including stop-motion photography.
- Méliès’s first film ‘Playing Cards’ and other 76 films released this year, most of which are now lost or presumed lost.
1901
- Thomas Edison closes the Black Maria.
1902
- Georges Méliès premieres ‘A Trip to the Moon’, which is regarded as the first science-fiction and one of the most influential films in the history of cinema.
Méliès’s is the first person to realize the potential of cinema, and he dedicated his career making over 500 films of various genres. His works are now considered to be the precursors to modern narrative cinema. But the WW I and other financial problems made Méliès stop making movies. Soon after that he was largely forgotten and financially broken. In a rage, Méliès burned all of the negatives of his films that he had stored. As a result only 200 of his films have been able to be preserved. He scraped together a living by working at a small candy and toy shop in one of the Paris Railway Stations, Gare Montparnasse. Around the end of the first quarter of the 20th century, gradual rediscovery of Méliès’s career began as the journalist Georges-Michel Coissac managed to track him down and interview him for a book on cinema history. As his prestige began to grow in the film world, he was given more recognition and in December 1929, a gala retrospective of his work was held.
Eventually Georges Méliès was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur, the highest French order of merit, which was presented to him in October 1931 by Louis Lumière. Lumière himself said that Méliès was the “creator of the cinematic spectacle.” Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret features an extensive tribute to Méliès’s contribution to cinema history, which is also adapted into a film, ‘Hugo’, by the legendary director of New Hollywood, Martin Scorsese.
However, the enormous amount of praise that he was receiving did not help his livelihood or decrease his poverty. Georges Méliès died of cancer on 21 January 1938, at the age of 76 and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
