104 | Mass Media and Historical Change
immensely high circulation figures of newspapers, magazines and books in the
twentieth century, this must be seen as only partially justified.
At the same time, film and media studies embedded the new media into
ongoing development processes. With virtually no exception, histories of
film commenced with older image projections such as the magic lantern, the
camera obscura, panoramas, still picture sequences and flick books (cf. e.g.
Wyver 1989: 5–14). For film did not merely trigger an advance in visualisa-
tion, but was rather the result of the popular visual culture of the nineteenth
century. For one, it evolved from the visual attractions of [country] fairs and
folk culture which had shaped its early popular reception. The great demand
for moving images thus secured the position of the cinema, which autom-
atised and standardised older visual forms of attraction, transforming them
into a new product (Bakker 2008: 404). On the other hand, scientific inter-
est also constituted a starting point. Rapid sequences of still pictures were
to compensate for the insufficiencies of the human eye. Specific images such
as a running horse’s legs (Eadweard Muybridge), flying birds (Etienne-Jules
Marey) or missile impacts (Ernst Mach) led to an improvement in shutter
speed and the invention of the motion picture reel, which formed the basis of
film technology.
In the 1890s inventors from several countries developed filming apparatus
almost simultaneously. This is further proof of the great desire for moving
images, and explains the rapid success of the new medium. As early as 1891,
U.S. inventor Thomas Edison developed the kinetograph for picture-taking as
well as the kinetoscope for exhibiting motion pictures. The latter was designed
as a peephole viewer in which a person had to insert a coin before watching
a film, which shows how open the initial use of film was. From 1894 he was
able to earn money from his invention in major American and West Euro-
pean cities. Yet although Edison developed the 35 mm film format with per-
forations on both sides, the French brothers Lumière are credited with being
the groundbreaking inventors of film. They adopted Edison’s film format, but
in 1895 they created an apparatus which enabled the recording and copying
as well as the playing of films, which were projected onto a light-coloured
surface. In late 1895 the two brothers showed their films publicly in Paris for
the first time and charged an admissions fee. Their creation was also techni-
cally superior to other continental filming devices developed in the same year,
such as the bioscope introduced by the brothers Skladanowsky in 1895, and a
projector of the British inventors Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres. The Lumières
were clever businessmen as well. They marketed their creation worldwide, not
only by selling their apparatus but also by hiring cameramen in their names
who would show their movies to audiences across the globe and concomitantly
film exotic impressions of foreign countries to show at future destinations.
Thus in 1896 the brief success of Edison’s filming machine ended.