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the aftermath of the war, as well as everyday scenes of
camp life and other historic events. In September and
October of 1867, Gardner photographed construction of
the Kansas Pacifi c Railroad, Eastern Division publishing
the photographs in Across the Continent on the Kansas
Pacifi c Railroad in 1868. From 1867 to 1868, Gardner
photographed Indian delegates to Congress for the Of-
fi ce of Indian Affairs, and in 1873 he made a rogues’
gallery for the Washington D.C. police. As Gardner’s
interest in photography waned, he devoted himself to
philanthropic causes through the Masonic Mutual Relief
Organization in Washington D.C. and the Washington
Benefi cial Endowment Association until he died on 12
December 1882.
See also: Brady, Mathew B.; and War Photography.
Further Reading
Cobb, Josephine, “Alexander Gardner” in Image, 7:6, June 1958,
124–136.
Fulton, Marianne, “Making a Difference.” Image, 32, December
1989, 2–4, 1–10.
Gardner, Alexander, Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of
the War, Washington D.C.: Philip and Solomons, 1866.
Republished as Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the
Civil War with an introduction by E.F. Bleiler, New York:
Dover, 1959.
Johnson, Brooks, An Enduring Interest: The Photographs of
Alexander Gardner, Norfolk: Chrysler Museum, 1991.
Katz, D. Mark, Witness to an Era: The Life and Photographs of
Alexander Gardner: The Civil War, Lincoln, and the West,
Nashville: Rutledge Hill, 1999.
Newhall, Beaumont and Nancy, “Alexander Gardner,” Masters
of Photography, New York: Park Lane, 1958, 38.
Obituary: The Philadelphia Photographer, 20(231), March
1883, 92–95.
Sobieszek, Robert, “Conquest by Camera: Alexander Gardner’s
‘Across the Continent on the Kansas Pacifi c Railroad.’” Art
in America, 60(2), 80–85.
Taft, Robert, “Civil War Photographers.” Photography and the
American Scene: A Social History, 1839–1889, New York:
Dover, 1938, 223–247.
Trachtenberg, Allen, “Albums of War,” Reading American Pho-
tographs: Images as History Mathew Brady to Walker Evans,
New York: Hill and Wang, 1989, 71–118.
GAUMONT, LÉON ERNEST (1864–1946)
Born in Paris in 1864, from 1881 Léon Gaumont was
employed in the workshops of Jules Carpentier, maker
of precision instruments, who would later construct the
Lumière Cinématographe. In 1894 Gaumont went to
work for Felix Richard in his shop, the Comptoir Gen-
eral de Photographie, 57 rue Saint-Roch, Paris. (This had
been founded in 1851 as the Maison Richard.) Gaumont
bought the business in August 1895, in partnership with
Gustave Eiffel, of tower fame, astronomer Joseph Vallot,
and fi nancier Alfred Besnier.
During the 1880s and early 90s several inventors
and scientists around the world had become involved in
sequence photography or ‘chronophotography,’ mostly
for purposes of motion analysis. Some, fascinated by the
possibilities of photographs that moved, had developed
methods of re-synthesising motion from these sequences,
leading to the development of cinematography. In 1895
Léon’s company, named L. Gaumont and Co., started to
manufacture and market the chronophotographic camera
for unperforated rollfi lm, and the Bioscope projector /
viewer (previously the Phonoscope, now re-named) for
sequence pictures mounted on a disc, both devised by
Georges Demenÿ. Léon Gaumont obtained fi lmstock
from Georges William deBedts, one of the earliest
producers of cinematograph materials and equipment.
However, these fi rst Gaumont-Demenÿ machines were
limited in their potential, and failed to fi nd a market.
Convinced of a future for the new moving image busi-
ness, Gaumont was undeterred by this setback and was
soon marketing new 60mm and then 35mm motion
picture cameras and projectors—still based on the
Demenÿ principle but now using perforated fi lm—and
these became very successful.
In the late 1890s Gaumont’s young secretary Alice
Guy directed fi lms for the company, and Léon Gaumont
experimented with Eiffel on “the new photography,”
X-rays. At the Paris Exposition of 1900, Gaumont
displayed “prints, enlargements, and photographic pro-
cesses.” By now well known in the photographic busi-
ness, Léon Gaumont was joint secretary of the second
committee of the International Congress of Photography
held during the Exposition, with responsibilities for
the subject “Photographic Material.” The Gaumont
Company was at this time the principal agent for the
Photo-Jumelles cameras of Jules Carpentier, and made
and sold folding plate, vest pocket , detective, and ste-
reoscopic cameras—with names including Block-Notes
and Spido. Stereoscopic viewers were also produced and
marketed by the company for many years, including the
Gaumont Stereodrome; a salon stereoscopic viewer of
superior optical and mechanical construction, for three
standard sizes of glass stereoviews.
Every aspect of moving images engaged Léon
Gaumont’s fertile mind. In the late 1890s, long before
the establishment of specially-built motion picture
theaters, the manufacturers of motion picture machines
and fi lms were actively exploring the various possible
outlets for the new medium. The domestic hobby market
seemed ripe for potential if a simple-to-operate, relative-
ly inexpensive, miniature system could be developed.
The Gaumont Chrono de Poche launched in 1900 was
an amateur cinematograph camera using a narrow-gauge
(15mm) fi lm with center-perforation; and was the fi rst
home movie camera to use a clockwork motor. The
same ‘beater’ mechanism, which had served Gaumont
so well, was also used for projection. At the close of the