Reynaud stood between the Shadow Plays and pantomimes of the ancients and the modern motion picture. Though he took no part in the development of motion picture photography and its application to the screen, he influenced the art-science by pioneering in the dramatic use of the medium, as well as introducing technical devices which were readily adaptable to motion picture use. Reynaud was, as Porta two-and-a-half centuries before, a showman. But while he was entertaining the public with screen pictures, the efforts of Marey, Greene, Rudge, Evans, Donisthorpe and many others, including Edison, were preparing the way for the screen art and science of magic shadows. At last the valid motion picture was ready for its public screen debut. [Illustration: Scientific American, 1892 _THEATRE OPTIQUE of Emile Reynaud used hand-painted film to tell entertaining stories. The screen plays received wide approval from audiences in Paris._] [Illustration: Scientific American, 1889 _ELECTRICAL TACHYSCOPE of Ottomar Anschütz was an attraction at the Chicago World’s Fair, 1893. It used an intermittent light source._] _XVII_ WORLD PREMIERES _Success at last--Magic shadows reach the screen in living motion--Edison-Armat and the Vitascope--Les Frères Lumière and the Cinématographe--Paul of London and the Animatograph or Theatrograph._ 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.