Before 1900 - an optical toy?

The pioneers 

  • for decades, moving image entertainment was done through 'magic lanterns'
  • soon a great deal of ingenuity was applied to obtaining the effects of movement by means of mechanical lantern slides (with levers, ratchets and sliding panels)
  • From 1860s, lanternists began to apply a technique known as 'the persistence of vision', which served as the fundamental physical principle of cinema -- our retina retains an impression for a fraction of a second after being exposed to the image. This was studied by physicists Peter Mark Roget and Michael Faraday (British), Joseph Plateau (Belgian), and Simon Stampfer (Austrian)
  • Plateau and Stampfer independently conceived the idea of a disc with a series of drawings around the edge. The disc was spun and the images were viewed in a mirror through slots cut in the disco's perimeter

    Horner's Zoetrope, 1834


    • images were arranged on a band inside a drum and were viewed as it was rapidly spun through slits cut in the upper half of the drum opposite the images. 
    • the slits kept the pictures from blurring together, and the viewer would see a rapid succession of images, creating the illusion of motion






      Reynaud's Praxinoscope, 1876

      • substituted a polygonal drum of mirrors. As the device was spun at the centre of the outer drum of images, it momentarily reflected their rapid succession, giving a bright and clear impression of movement.
      • Then came the 'Praxinoscope a Projections' in which images are semi-transparent. Light passed through the images reflected off the spinning mirrors on the screen. 
      • In 1892, Reynaud presented the 'Pantomimes Lumineuses' - a continuous band of images for projection it came a significant stage nearer to the cinema we know today. Movements were no longer restricted to the cyclic limits
      • The film-maker was still required to draw his images.









        Muybridge's phenakistiscope, 1877

         
        • British but lived in America
        • When asked by California Governor Stanford to produce instantaneous photographs of his race horse, he started a series of experiments.
        • set up a battery of cameras alongside a track, their shutters being release in turn as the horse set off a trigger by touching a cord as it passed each camera. The result proved that when a horse runs, there is a moment when all four legs leave the ground. 
        • After this successful experiment, Muybridge continued to publish series of photographs of different kinds of human and animal movements. 
        • projected the short cycles of movements he had recorded by a phenakistiscope, which he called a 'zoopraxiscope'

          Marey's fusil photgraphique 1881-2

          • designed the world's first portable motion picture camera -- a camera in the shape of a rifle 
          • used it to take 12 frames  of birds in flight.




            Eastman Kodak's first roll film, 1888

            • made it possible for Marey to create the chronophotographe, a camera capable of taking long sequences of photographs on one strip of film.
            • first "box" camera to be used by the public and its design became the archetype for cameras to come. The flexible roll film meant that the cameras were light and portable

             



            William Dickson & Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope, 1891

            • a 'peepshow' device in which images were viewed in motion
            • But only one viewer at a time


            The Lumieres' Cinematographe, 1895

            • combined all the existing technology to create the Cinematographe, a machine that allowed an audience to watch a projection of moving images on a screen together
            • first screening on 28 December 1895 in Paris: footage from 'L’Arroseur arrosé':
             

            The Lumieres later continued to develop the technology. Yet when Georges Melies (the one who would soon became the first artist of the medium) tried to buy a copy of the cinematographe from Antoine Lumiere, the old man refused and said, "This can be exploited for a while as scientific curiosity; beyond that it has no commercial future." (Robinson, 1971, p.23)





            Sources:
            Robinson, David. The History of World Cinema. 1971.
            http://www.precinemahistory.net/