Origins
Like the motor car, the technology of cinema is one of the crowning achievement of the Industrial Revolution. Both arrived in the early 1890s and both were dependent on the extraordinary scientific achievements of the 19th century. The possibility of ‘motion pictures’ required a series of breakthroughs in electrical, mechanical and chemical processes to be realised. These breakthroughs included reliable electrical motors and light, fast-exposure photography and the development of a flexible and durable material for storing photographic images.
The theoretical groundwork for moving pictures was laid down in 1824, only two years after the Frenchman Joseph Niepce produced the first permanent photograph. In that year Peter Mark Rogêt described his theory of “The Persistence of Vision with Regard to Moving Objects”. Rogêt’s theory suggested that the human eye retains an image for a fraction of a second after it has been seen. In fact, the phenomenon had been observed since the time of the Ancient Egyptians, but with Rogêt’s confident assertion scientists immediately began putting the theory to the test. A variety of mechanical devices (revolving drums, spinning cards etc.) were constructed in which the optical illusion of movement was created using a series of still images. This effect of motion is recreated the world over by schoolchildren when they draw stick men in the corner of an exercise book (with their limbs sketched in slightly different positions from one page to the next) and then flick the pages rapidly.
The 19th century is littered with experiments with motion pictures. Magic lantern shows in which projected images appeared to move had been a popular entertainment for over two hundred years and devices such as the Zoetrope, Stroboscope, Praxinoscope and Kinematoscope were developed and refined to illustrate the elementary principles of animation. In 1878 Edward Muybridge set up a row of twelve cameras to photograph a horse at full gallop to provide evidence for a bet. The exposure time of each photograph was a mere one thousandth of a second, tripped by threads across the race track connected to the cameras. The photographic results proved once and for all that the four legs of a horse do leave the ground together at one point. Copied onto a revolving disc these photographs appeared to show the horse in motion.