Magic Shadows: The Story of the Origin of Motion PicturesQuigley, Martin
History
Magic Shadows: The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures
Quigley, Martin
Lantern projection; Motion pictures -- History
Reynaud has a projector called the Lamposcope--as all
early projectors, limited to showing the one scene made up
of a set of stills mounted on the edge of a disk.
1884 George Eastman begins at Rochester, New York, the
manufacture of roll paper film for use in his Kodak camera.
1887 Hannibal Williston Goodwin, an Episcopalian minister,
obtains a patent on Photographic Pellicle which is described
as transparent, sensitive and like celluloid. His
efforts came after becoming interested in photography
through magic lantern entertainments he conducted for
his congregation. His patents ultimately led to the business
of Anthony & Scoville, now known as Ansco.
Marey, in France, achieves first success with his
chronophotographic or motion picture system using slips of
coated paper film.
Edison begins experiments aimed at producing an apparatus
which would do for sight what the phonograph had
done for sound--i. e., motion pictures; and a device which
would combine both--i. e., a sound motion picture system.
1888 John Carbutt achieves success in his efforts, started several
years before, to treat with photographic chemicals long
strips of celluloid obtained from the Hyatt Company.
Eastman continues work which lead to successful motion
picture film.
Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince patents a multiple lens
camera-projector system which, however, never produced
satisfactory results.
1889 Ottomar Anschütz stimulates interest in motion pictures
with his Electrical Tachyscope--a good viewing apparatus
for a series of pictures successively illuminated by a
Geissler tube. This device was the progenitor of modern
stroboscopic photography.
Edison and Kennedy Laurie Dickson, his assistant for
motion picture research, continue investigations. Film
stock is ordered from Eastman. First successes are claimed.
In Paris, Marey shows Edison a magic disk equipped
with photos and lighted by electric flashes.
Eastman applies, on December 10, 1889, for a patent on
“the manufacture of flexible photographic films.” The
patent was not issued until 1898 and a long legal battle
ensued with the Goodwin estate until a compromise was
reached.
1889
to Edison investigations aimed at producing a motion picture
1894 camera and projector continue.
1889 Wordsworth Donisthorpe and Croft obtain the first real
motion picture patents in England but never had sufficient
financial backing to perfect the system or even make an
efficient model.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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