The motion picture made its commercial debut in 1895 and 1896, more or less simultaneously, in Paris, London, New York and elsewhere. That debut is duplicated occasionally at the present time when important Hollywood films have a number of simultaneous “world premieres.”
With the introduction of a satisfactory projector of life-size moving pictures which were not limited to a few seconds’ duration but could run for a number of minutes, the story of the origin of magic shadow entertainment comes to an end. From that day the phenomenal progress in entertainment and instruction of the motion picture is particularly history of that art-science. Magic shadow history is being written currently every evening on tens of thousands of screens before millions of spectators.
The motion picture projectors which finally were entirely successful and from which the history of the motion picture, properly speaking, arises were all principally based on Edison’s Kinetograph film peep-show which in 1894 was shown in New York, Paris and London.
In the Fall of 1894 Louis Lumière saw the Edison Kinetograph demonstrated at the Werner firm exhibit in Paris at 20 Boulevard Poissonière. From this he conceived the idea of combining such an apparatus with the Reynaud-type, which was already providing screen entertainment in Paris. Doubtless, Lumière was also familiar with Marey’s work.
Louis Lumière and his brother, Auguste, operated a photographic establishment at Lyons which their father had established. Lyons figured once before in the magic shadow show; it was here that Walgenstein, the Dane, first introduced Kircher’s magic lantern in France.
Lumière, who was a successful photographer, decided that the number of images used by Edison per second, forty-eight, was more than necessary so he used sixteen. Lumière, however, borrowed from Edison the idea of perforating the edge of the film, having one on each side of every frame instead of Edison’s four. Lumière adopted a claw type intermittent drive for the apparatus which was designed by an engineer, Charles Moissant. Léon Gaumont, who later became associated with Demeny, was Moissant’s secretary. The machine was constructed by the Jules Carpentier manufacturing firm.
First experiments were made with coated paper but this was found unsuitable. Celluloid was ordered from the American Celluloid Company and this the Lumières coated themselves because, unlike Edison, they were skilled in photography before they took up the motion picture problem. The Lumières were able to use celluloid but it was not as good as the Eastman motion picture film which Edison had found so satisfactory.
On February 13, 1895, the Lumières obtained a French patent on their camera-projector device, the Cinématographe. The name Cinématographe probably was derived from a French patent issued February 12, 1892, to Léon Bouly who had an idea for a camera which evidently was not reduced to practice.
Le Repas de Bébé, “The Baby’s Meal,” was the first Lumière film. Other scenes were made in the Lumière photographic plant, together with views of the city, including the Bourse. A demonstration of the apparatus was given there on March 22, 1895, but the Lumières were already established in business and in no haste to develop the new invention. The Cinématographe was shown at Marseilles in April, the month an English patent was obtained, and next shown at the Congress of the National Union of French Photographic Societies, held in June of the same year. There the Lumières created a sensation by filming the delegates arriving for the opening meeting on June 10, developing the film and showing it before the conference was adjourned on June 12. This was the first newsreel use of the motion picture.
On December 28th, the Lumières opened a commercial establishment for the Cinématographe in the Salle au Grand-Café at 14, Boulevard des Capucines. An admission charge of one franc was made, but only a few dozen curious people stopped in the first day. Soon however the fame of the Cinématographe spread throughout Paris. Within a few weeks the Lumière films were playing to “standing room only,” averaging more than two thousand admissions per day.