Officially born in 1895, Cinema is the product of many 19th century scientific endeavours. Cinematography is the illusion of movement given by the recording and displaying of a very fast sequence of many still pictures.
image source: http://www.indiaeducation.net/careercenter/masscommunication/film-making/
Who invented cinema?
There isn’t any knowledge about the person who invented cinema. However, in 1891 the Edison Company in the USA successfully demonstrated a prototype of the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures.
Solving the problems Edison encountered, the Lumiere brothers invented the cinématographe, a device combining the camera with a printer and projection as well as the function to produce intermittent movement in order to display motion pictures for an audience.
The device was lightweight, operated by a hand crank, and available for multiple viewers to watch at one time.
image source: https://www.indiewire.com/2020/03/lumiere-brothers-workers-leaving-factory-anniversary-1202219698/
Birth of Cinema
The cinématographe was patented in February of 1895 and a month later, they screened their first short film, which depicted workers leaving a factory and was considered the first motion picture.
At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes or less. They were shown at fairgrounds and music halls or anywhere a screen could be set up and a room darkened. Subjects included local scenes and activities, views of foreign lands, short comedies and events considered newsworthy.
The films were accompanied by lecturers, music and a lot of audience participation—although they did not have synchronised dialogue, they were not ‘silent’ as they are sometimes described.
image source: http://cutprintfilm.com/features/trains-and-cinema/
info source: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/very-short-history-of-cinema/
