944
while lecturing, his 1892 multi-slide projector featured
revolving lenses, but was not successful. A later projec-
tor used a rotating light source, but the introduction of
cinematography precluded further development.
During 1895 news spread that in France the Lumière
brothers, active workers in their father’s photographic
plate factory, had succeeded in producing the Ciné-
matographe—for taking, printing, and projecting 35mm
perforated fi lm by means of a pin-shuttle movement.
From February they demonstrated the result, including
the one-minute subject Workers Leaving the Factory, to
photographic and scientifi c societies.
English engineer Robert Paul was making Kineto-
scope copies, but needed a cinematographer to produce
the fi lms. Birt Acres, manager of a photographic ma-
terials company, had long been interested in the idea
of motion pictures, producing glass-plate chronopho-
tographs of cloud formations, and was experimenting
with a 35mm motion picture fi lm camera. He took a new
mechanism design to Paul, who built it. A successful test
in February 1895 led to the production of England’s fi rst
fi lms, including the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.
Acres departed to Germany in June to fi lm the opening
of the Kiel Canal under the sponsorship of the Stollwerk
chocolate and vending machine company, and the Pau
/Acres partnership dissolved in acrimony.
With his 1894 picture play Miss Jerry and others,
American lecturer Alexander Black gave many per-
formances of photographic dissolving-scene slide nar-
ratives, the “slow movie,” just before the public’s fi rst
view of projected fi lms.
The fi rst fi lm screenings to a paying audience were
those of the Eidoloscope, in New York City. Kinetoscope
licensees Otway and Gray Latham produced a camera
for 2-inch fi lm, and shot an extended boxing match.
The projector worked on the kinetoscope principle, with
continuously moving fi lm. To prevent a blurred image
the shutter aperture was extremely narrow, limiting
the size of the projected image. Nevertheless, public
performances were given from May, 1895.
In September-October, at the Cotton States Exposi-
tion in Atlanta, Georgia, inventors Thomas Armat and
Charles Francis Jenkins used their 35mm Phantascope
projector to give screenings of kinetoscope fi lms.
By summer 1895 German lanternist Max Skladan-
owsky had developed a projector using two loops of
54mm fi lm, with double optical and lighting systems,
projecting frames alternately from each band. (His fi rst
fi lms were taken on an 1892 chronophotographic roll
fi lm camera, designed with his brother Emile). With
a picture always on the screen there was no blackout
period, signifi cantly reducing fl icker. The machine was
used to project six-second, repeating sequences—sub-
jects included The Boxing Kangaroo—at the Berlin Win-
tergarten theatre from 1st November, and in Hamburg
on 21 December. A week later the Lumières opened
public shows at the Grand Café in Paris, with such fi lms
as Baby’s Breakfast.
Back in England, Acres demonstrated screen projec-
tion in January 1896, and Paul likewise the following
month. In the USA, Jenkins and Armat argued and split
up, and Armat sold the projector design to the Edison
camp. When high-profi le shows commenced in New
York in April 1896, the machine appeared as the Edison
Vitascope.
Dickson had left Edison in 1895, and after briefl y
assisting the Lathams joined Elias Koopman, Her-
man Casler and Harry Marvin in an association soon
to become American Mutoscope and Biograph (with
associated overseas companies). Intending to produce
a peepshow to rival the Edison kinetoscope, they soon
realised that their hand-cranked mutoscope had a limited
future, and devised a projector. The 68mm fi lm negative
was perforated in the camera to provide a reference to
register the images on the positive. The projector used
a gripper-roller to pull down the unperforated print. The
huge electric camera was cumbersome but the image
was of high resolution, and the large-format Biograph
would be used in a limited number of prestigious venues
for some years before the company adopted 35mm.
Their fl ip-photo mutoscope appeared in amusement
arcades from 1896, persisting as a nostalgic novelty
for decades.
As the fi rst fi lm pioneers struggled to project photo-
graphic motion pictures onto screens, others continued
to use sequence photography for chronophotographic
analysis: C.V. Boys with rifl e bullets and bubbles, A.M.
Worthington the shape of liquid splashes. The introduc-
tion of cinematography around the world from 1896
had little effect on chronophotography for analytical
purposes, which continued apace, in turn making use
of the technical developments of the commercial me-
dium, especially the use of 35mm perforated celluloid;
in 1900 Marey constructed a 35mm fi lm version of his
chonophotographic gun.
In Paris, from 1896 Reynaud adapted photographic
motion pictures for his Théâtre Optique, but in 1900 his
show was closed.
In the twentieth century, the high-speed motion
picture insect and balistics photography of Marey’s
successor Lucien Bull and colleagues would provide
the transition from chronophotography to scientifi c
cinematography; and from the fl ickering images of
Edison’s peepshow would grow a worldwide motion
picture industry, communication-entertainment me-
dium, and art form.
Stephen HerbertSee also: Acres, Brit; Anschütz, Ottomar; Brewster,
Sir David; Bull, Lucien George; Casler, Herman;