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 .
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No one person 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 a 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.
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.
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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.
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info source: https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/very-short-history-of-cinema/
