Lumière

Although the Lumiere Brothers believed it to be a medium without a future as they thought people would become bored of streamed images, the French inventors and pioneer manufacturers of photographic equipment created the film La Sortie des ouvriers de l’usine Lumière  (1895; “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”), which is considered the first motion picture. They have been credited with over 1,425 different short films and even filmed aerial shots years before an airplane would take to the skies.

Louis Lumière developed a new 'dry plate' process in 1881 at the age of seventeen, it became known as the 'Etiquette Bleue' process. By 1894 the Lumières were producing around 15,000,000 plates a year. Antoine, by now a successful and well known businessman, was invited to a demonstration of Edison’s Peephole Kinetoscope in Paris.




He was excited by what he saw and returned to Lyons. He presented his son Louis with a piece of Kinetoscope film, given to him by one of Edison’s concessionaires and said, "This is what you have to make, because Edison sells this at crazy prices and the concessionaires are trying to make films here in France to have them cheaper.

By early 1895, the brothers had invented their own device combining camera with printer and projector and called it the Cinématographe. Patenting it on February 13th 1895, the Cinématographe was much smaller than Edison’s Kinetograph, was lightweight (around five kilograms), and was hand cranked. The Lumières used a film speed of 16 frames per second, much slower compared with Edison’s 48 fps - this meant that less film was used an also the clatter and grinding associated with Edison’s device was reduced.

The first screenings occurred on 22nd March 1895 at 44 Rue de Rennes in Paris at an industrial meeting where a film especially for the occasion, “Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”, was shown but they are arguably best known for Danse Serpentine and Le Squelette Joyeaux, below.  In 1907 they produced the first practical colour photography process, the Autochrome Plate.  Seems the visual arts owe a lot to the Lumière Brothers and you can watch a playlist of some of their work here.