Technology

Cinematographe

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Cinema and Projection Technology

The Cinematographe Lumiere was a combined motion picture camera, printer and projector patented by Auguste and Louis Lumiere, whose patent for an apparatus for obtaining and viewing chronophotographic prints was filed on 13 February 1895. Weighing only about 16 pounds (7.3 kilograms), it used the same 35 millimeter film gauge as Edison's kinetoscope but with a single perforation per frame rather than four, and its reversible design let the same machine record, print and project. The Lumiere brothers first showed a film to an invited audience in Paris on 22 March 1895, and staged the first paid public screening at the Salon Indien du Grand Cafe in Paris on 28 December 1895, an event often called cinema's birth. The first commercial public screening of any cinematographic film was actually staged five weeks earlier, on 20 May 1895 at 156 Broadway in New York, using Woodville Latham and Eugene Lauste's rival Eidoloscope, a claim often overshadowed by the Paris screening. Cheap, portable and simple enough for an ordinary photographer to operate, the Cinematographe was taken by Lumiere operators to cities across Europe, Asia and the Americas, but its combined role as camera and projector was abandoned within a few years as filmmaking and exhibition became separate, specialized trades.

Facts

Introduced Year

1895 1

Origin

Patented by Auguste and Louis Lumiere, Lyon, 1895; first paid public screening 28 December 1895 in Paris. 1

FAQs

Did the Lumiere brothers hold the first public film screening?

Not quite the very first: Woodville Latham and Eugene Lausters Eidoloscope had a paid public screening in New York on 20 May 1895, five weeks before the Lumieres famous Paris screening.

Their 28 December 1895 screening at the Salon Indien du Grand Cafe in Paris is often called cinemas birth, and it was the first PAID public screening to use the Cinematographe. But the first commercial public screening of any cinematographic film was actually staged five weeks earlier, on 20 May 1895, at 156 Broadway in New York, using Woodville Latham and Eugene Lausters rival Eidoloscope, a claim often overshadowed by the more famous Paris event.

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