Thomas Edison
A camera that looked like a shotgun was used by the French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey to study the movement of birds and animals. The camera was improved to the point that it could take up to 120 frames per second on a strip of paper film. Marey’s invention was seen by Thomas Edison in Paris in 1889 and inspired him to work with the new Eastman Kodak celluloid film stock to develop his Kinetograph camera and viewing box. In fact Edison turned the project over to an assistant William Dickson who solved the problem of moving the newly developed celluloid strips through the camera using the sprocket system that is still used today. Dickson demonstrated the first moving celluloid film in August 1889 to his employer. It was linked to a phonograph (another Edison invention) and showed himself talking and so the first motion-picture film ‘also marked the debut of the talkies’ (Knight 1957).
It is remarkable that the first films William Dickson made can still be shown on a modern cinema projector. This is because his decision to cut Eastman’s 70mm celluloid strips lengthways, in half, and put four rectangular sprocket holes on the side of each 35mm frame (an idea borrowed from the perforated paper of Edison ’s automatic telegraph) has remained standard industry practice to the present day. However, the original 46 frames per second that Dickson used was quickly reduced to 16 frames per second which remained the norm for almost thirty years throughout the silent era until the introduction of sound in 1927 when 24 frames per second became the standard speed.
Early Cinema
It is strange to think, as Cook (1996) notes, that we spend as much as 50 percent of our time in the cinema in total darkness when we watch a film. Only the ‘persistance of vision’ that Rogêt described prevents us from seeing the black screen that the projector shutter creates twice every frame. At speeds slower than 24 frames per second audiences may notice a flicker, which accounts for the early nickname given to films, ‘the flicks’. In fact Edison ’s Kinetoscope viewer was only a peepshow machine designed for one person. The problem of steadily and reliably moving film through the aperture of a projector with brilliant enough illumination for a public viewing was solved almost simultaneously in 1895 by the famous Lumière brothers (Louis and Auguste) in France, Max Skladanowsky in Germany, Robert Paul in Britain and Thomas Armat in America. The Lumière invention was possibly the most impressive as the same relatively small and portable machine (the Cinématographe) served as camera, printer and projector. However, Armat’s projector later marketed as ‘Edison’s Vitascope’ (although Edison played no part in its invention) was the most widely sold device and is the closest in its essential design to a modern projector. The premiere of all four projectors in their respective countries in 1895 caused a sensation and launched the first crucial decade in cinema’s relatively short history.
Almost until the turn of the century ‘one-shot’ films, usually no more than a minute in length, were the standard format for nearly every motion pictures shown. One reason for this is partly technical: projectors tended to strain and snap longer films. By 1896 Robert Paul in Britain and Woodville Latham in the United States had developed projectors in which two simple film loops greatly reduced tearing in the projector. The device was incorporated into the Vitascope and other projectors allowing for longer reels of film to be shown. This, the simple addition of two small sprockets to projectors - creating what became known as the ‘Latham loop’ - resulted in an almost infinite expansion of the artistic possibilities of the motion pictures.