Welcome	About	Introduction	Chapter One beginning of time – 999 AD
Chapter Two 1000 AD – 1399	Chapter Three 1400 – 1599	Chapter Four 1600 – 1649	Chapter Five 1650 – 1699
Chapter Six 1700 – 1749	Chapter Seven 1750 – 1799	Chapter Eight 1800 – 1819	Chapter Nine 1820 – 1829
Chapter Ten 1830 – 1839	Chapter Eleven 1840 – 1849	Chapter Twelve 1850 – 1859	Chapter Thirteen 1860 – 1869
Chapter Fourteen 1870 – 1879	Chapter Fifteen 1880 – 1884	Chapter Sixteen 1885 – 1889	Chapter Seventeen 1890 – 1894
Chapter Eighteen 1895 – 1899	Chapter Nineteen 1900 + post cinema	Chapter Twenty 1911 +	Copyright
HOTDOC Internet Archive Channel	HOTDOC X Channel	HOTDOC You Tube Channel

_{Period: 1885 – 1889}

Who invented motion pictures?
No one.
No one person that is.

No one individual can claim the title for their own, or be handed the crown. However, all those who we have learned of so far, and those we are to learn about in this chapter, can all be considered co-discoverers and inventors of a medium which has been waiting to be discovered for several thousand years.

The time has come.

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1885
FAST PHOTOS
ERNST MACH (1838-1916)
Mach was a professor in Prague. He photographed the passage of fast-moving objects clearly showing the sound waves breaking the air in excess of 760 miles per hour.

The cone created by the shock wave is pictured thanks to photography.

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Mach succeeded at photographing projectiles moving at approximately 765 miles per hour

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The earliest Schlieren photographs of shock waves were black and white images. Schlieren imagery was invented in 1864 by German physicist August Toepler.

It shows how the movement of smoke, the air around a bird’s wing moves, the way water appears when it swirls around an obstruction, and the way a bullet’s air reacts at high speed.

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Referring to Ernst Mach’s photographing the passage of fast-moving objects, is this entry taken from The History of Photography – From the Camera Obscura to The Beginning of The Modern Era (Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969), on page 445.

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He is regarded as the father of the philosophy of science, and his mistrust of old physics influenced the following generation of young scientists, including Albert Einstein.

Coins and postage stamps commemorate the work of Ernst Mach in the pioneering of photographing objects in motion.

Some of these pre cinema delights still exist and are in such absolute pristine condition like the one we see here. Many are known to be held in such trustworthy hands as the Queralto Collection, Barcelona, the Antiq Photo Collection Paris, Cinémathèque française Paris, the Tomas Mallol Collection, Girona and the Werner Nekes Collection, Mulheim. Pictured is one from Antiq Photo.

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E. Hartmann-Bahon are credited with building Praxinoscopes with integrated music boxes between 1885 and 1895, based on Reynaud’s original design. These devices combined visual animation with accompanying melodies, with the Praxinoscope’s rotation mechanism connected to the music cylinder.

_{Image Cinémathèque française, copyright photo Dabrowski Stéphane Image Tomas Mallol Collection, Girona}

_{Images Cinémathèque française, copyright photos Dabrowski Stéphane}

These Musical Praxinoscope allowed for a more complete sensory experience, inside a trend of integrating sound with moving images as the end of the 19^th century approached and the desire to blend synchronized sound with animated pictures became stronger.

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Barnett Henry Abrahams, who emigrated to St. Croix, Switzerland in 1857, developed a deluxe version of the Reynaud Praxinoscope with mechanical music in 1895. Little is known about this version, which was most likely marketed alongside a model from Abrahams that used a coin-operated trigger, converting it into a commercial version. Abrahams was a musical box maker and dealer and founded a business manufacturing musical boxes.

_{Images Antiq Photos}

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This video from Museu del Cinema shows a coin-operated Musical Praxinoscope made by E. Hartmann-Bahon in, or close to 1895.

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As the article tells us, “How many times has it not happened that the excursionist has regretted his inability to fix the landscapes and curious scenes that were unveiling themselves to his eyes? What was impossible with the slow and complicated processes of dry and wet collodion has now become a simple thing, thanks to gelatino-bromide. It was necessary, however, to give a form to the alliance of the new photographic processes with locomotion, and so Messrs. Rudge & Co. have brought out the photo-tricycle which we illustrate herewith, and which they style “

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The camera was fixed on a universal joint, allowing it to snap photos from any position. Three boxes, each carrying six 6 x 4-inch plates, are within the rider’s reach and may be swiftly and simply swapped out. The bellows camera could be left upon the tricycle or removed and placed upon a tripod.

As Messrs. Rudge & Company told its readers, “This is an innovation that will be highly appreciated by amateurs who cultivate both the arts of tricycling and photography, and this is why we make known to our readers a combination which is of a nature to render them some service.”

1885
THE TOY CINEMATOGRAPH
GIANNI BETTINI (1860-1938)
A former cavalry lieutenant in the Italian army, Bettini emigrated to the United States in 1885 for love, and to become a wealthy American. He rapidly took a mindfulness in the development of recorded music and animated pictures.

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Bettini’s goal in the US was to utilise a patent for a “Cinematograph of a new system, recording and reproducing animated views by means of photographic plates” in all countries of the world, with the exception of England, its colonies, both Americas, and Canada.

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he rapidly took a mindfulness in the development of recorded music and animated pictures

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LE CINÉMATOGRAPHE À PLAQUES
Falling short with the Kino Plak, Bettini did not give up on “recording and reproducing animated views by means of photographic plates.”

The Cinématographe à Plaques was a smaller and more practical version of the Kino Plak.

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With the ordinary cinematograph apparatus, the lens is fixed and the film is moved intermittently. In the Bettini system the sensitised plate surface was held rigidly, and it is the lens which moves.

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Fast forward to the 1920’s and we find Bettini still continuing on his quest of plate-cinema over “ribbon media” by filling three more patents. This image is an illustration of how the Kino Plak looked in operation.

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Bettini also designed a special device called the “cinematographic dubbing machine,” making it possible to edit his plates.

Gianni Bettini’s dubber was used to reproduce on glass plates, all the shots of an ordinary film.

^{Image ‘La science et la vie’ of June 1912}

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C. 1885
A periscope-style Magic Lantern being used above a medical operation which is projected onto a screen for a lecture in the adjoining room. Unknown year. The illustration has often been wrongly attributed to Frank H. Netter, MD.

^{Image W. R. Seton Wellcome Collection}

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New Visual technology like motion pictures and advanced projection was being explored to bridge the gap between surgical practice and large-group medical education, picking up where Messter and others had left off.

Bentley was a pioneering photographer known as “Snowflake Bentley.” Fascinated by nature from a young age, he received a microscope from his mother at 15, sparking his lifelong obsession with snowflakes. Unable to draw their intricate designs before they melted, he developed a groundbreaking technique by attaching a bellows camera to a microscope, capturing the first detailed snowflake photograph on January 15, 1885, at age 19.

Over his lifetime, he photographed over 5,000 snow crystals, famously asserting that “no two snowflakes are alike,” a claim that captivated public imagination. His innovative photomicrography techniques, remarkably similar to modern methods, earned him recognition as America’s first cloud physicist.

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His photographs are great specimens of a topological method in photography which is the use of the camera to classify collect, and describe, the countless actualities of the graphic universe.

Remember Ledermuller doing the same in the 1760s.

^{Images Met Museum}

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A magnificent photograph of frost, freezing water droplets, by Wilson Bentley, ca. 1910.

Found in Frank Leslie’s Weekly, an American illustrated news publication which lasted from 1855 until 1922. This illustration is from a 1920 issue.

Bentley was called the “farmer scientist.” He advanced his learning to such a degree that even today he is known as an authority on snowflakes.

In 1904, he donated 500 snowflake photographs to the Smithsonian Institution for safekeeping. His 1931 book, Snow Crystals, co-authored with William J. Humphreys, featured over 2,400 images and remains in print today. Despite his contributions, Bentley faced local skepticism, with some neighbors dismissing him as eccentric. He died of pneumonia on 23 December 1931, after walking six miles home in a blizzard, just as his book was published. His legacy endures through exhibits, a science centre at Vermont State University, and the Caldecott Medal-winning children’s book Snowflake Bentley. His lifelong home in Jericho is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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Together they meet customer and another of the great British cinema pioneers, Robert W. Paul. Moy began creating films in 1897, after patenting many cine-related products.

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many of the great British and American early silent-era film stars were photographed with one of the Moy and Bastie model cameras

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They formed the Cinematograph Company Limited and began producing cameras that would last long into the silent era and become a go-to camera of the early studios.

The Moy and Bastie camera of 1900 is pictured, from the Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers.

^{Image the Internet Encyclopedia of Cinematographers}

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Moy and Bastie cameras had mahogany bodies with brass fittings, hand cranking operated the claw movement through gearing, and an unconventionally grooved cylinder called a drunken screw.

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Many of the great British and American early silent-era film stars were photographed with one of the Moy and Bastie model cameras; May Clark, Sebastian Smith, Alice Young, Dorothea Baird, Florence Lawrence, Nell Shipman, Dustin Farnum, William S. Hart, Sessue Hayakawa and others.

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WATCH collector and historian Sam Dodge present one of his Moy and Bastie Cameras from 1909-10. This model shown is quite possibly the 50^th camera out of the factory, about 112 years ago.

Near-pristine condition. Runs 6:43

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SEE the other Moy and Bastie Camera Sam Dodge talked about in the first video. Nº 54 was manufactured and patented in 1909-1910 as was Nº 50. Runs 6:50

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As Rossell states, “There are no known photographs of the Anschütz chronophotographic cameras.”

This is unfortunate when digging into the past, with little to show except for the written word. Rossell went on;

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following 1885-1886, Anschütz accomplished a variety of outstanding Chronophotographic work, none of which survives for some strange reason

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All twelve lenses were supplied by a single focal-plane shutter, and were made in stages like a stairway. This schematic-style sketch of Anschütz’s first Chronophotographic Camera is by his son Guido Anschütz and is from his work Kinotechnik published in 1940, on p115.

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Deac Rossell explains the passion Anschütz had for producing “movement through photography;”

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In the subsequent years following 1885-1886, Anschütz accomplished a variety of outstanding Chronophotographic work, none of which survives for some strange reason;

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READ Deac Rossell’s full work The Anschütz Camera and Its Chronophotographs at the late Stephen Herbert’s The Optilogue here.

1885
A Tyler Biunial Magic Lantern manufactured by the English lantern and slide maker Walter Tyler of London England. It has brass optics and fittings. Original gas hookup can be seen in the right image.

In 1876 Walter Clement Tyler started in business in the optical lantern, slide and associated industry.

^{Images de Luikerwaal}

1885
THE ROYAL POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTION
The Royal Polytechnic Institution (formally The Polytechnic Institution, later The Royal Polytechnic Institution, and finally The Royal Polytechnic) was one of the most influential centres for public science and optical entertainment in 19th century London, and a direct bridge between scientific demonstration and pre cinema activities bringing the public closer and closer to what was coming.

It was one of the first to use projections in illustrated lectures, popular education sessions or recreational performances. It’s founders were Sir George Cayley and Frederick Collier Bakewell and Sir George Birkbeck’s ideals of public technical education influenced it.

It was chartered in 1839, as The Polytechnic Institution for the Advancement of the Arts and Practical Science. Located at 309 Regent Street, London, it was a purpose-built exhibition hall with lecture theatre, laboratories, and display rooms. In 1841 Queen Victoria granted permission to use the title Royal.

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This was the golden period of pre cinema showmanship

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Its declared aim was “To illustrate the principles of the arts and sciences by means of experiments and models.” The RPI stood midway between a public museum, lecture hall, and entertainment venue, offering an educational yet spectacular experience for the middle classes. Visitors paid a modest admission fee to see “scientific amusements” blending legitimate science with theatrical display.

From 1854, its new director, John Henry Pepper (1821-1900) developed the use of light projections in all the activities of the RPI. Passionate about optics, Pepper hired the best painters and lanternists of the time.

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It’s Pepper who presents shows of “living spectres.”  When the Magic Lantern possessed sufficiently powerful lighting, many illusionists both in Great Britain, France, and Japan put on more realistic ghost shows. The Polytechnic became a major site for optical projection and Magic Lantern developments in Britain.

The RPI had large lanterns designed for Dissolving Views which were two or three lanterns synchronized to create transitions, becoming a precursor to cinematic dissolves. Henry Langdon Childe, it’s inventor, became especially famous here from the 1840s onward.

The main hall featured a large central tank with fountains and hydraulic effects, often lit with colored lantern light. There were also demonstrations of engines, diving bells, and automata.

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THE TRANSITION TO MOTION IMAGERY
The Polytechnic lantern stage became a forerunner of the cinema screen. Many lantern manufacturers including Carpenter & Westley and Newton & Company supplied or tested projection apparatus there. Regular programs covered physics, chemistry, astronomy, microscopy, and electricity, with demonstrations using apparatus designed for grand spectacle. Prominent lecturers included John Henry Pepper (1821–1900), chemist and showman, who later became the institution’s most famous figure.

Pepper introduced the celebrated Pepper’s Ghost illusion in 1862, a theatrical projection using angled glass and a hidden actor, devised with engineer Henry Dircks. By the 1880s–1890s, Robert Paul, who would later co-found British cinema, worked and exhibited there including early motion picture demonstrations (1896).

Here from Letters on Natural Magic, by Sir David Brewster published by John Murray, London in 1832, p401, Brewster tells us about the illusion he witnessed.

On p402, Brewster continues his description of the John Henry Pepper deception. Brewster concludes on p403 with his comparison of Pepper with Shakespeare and his ghosts of Hamlet and the Tempest. Notice Brewster speaks of Pepper’s use of a green screen.

THE GOLDEN PERIOD OF PRE CINEMA
Under Pepper’s direction, the Polytechnic became synonymous with Victorian science popularization. It’s Christmas entertainments combined moral stories, science, and illusion, attracting both children and adults.

This was the golden period of pre cinema showmanship. The lantern stage, reflected ghost illusions, and dissolving projections at the Polytechnic directly influenced the development of cinematic narrative and illusionism.

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John Henry Pepper presented shows of “living spectres”

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The Polytechnic lantern stage became a forerunner of the silver screen

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In 1881 the RPI was reorganized as The Polytechnic Young Men’s Christian Institute by philanthropist Quintin Hogg. The optical entertainments gradually declined as cinema emerged. The building later became part of the University of Westminster, which still occupies the Regent Street site today.

READ The True History of the Ghost and All About Metempsychosls written by Professor Pepper himself, published by Cassell & Company, from 1890.

Material from the Royal Polytechnic Institution survives in the University of Westminster Archive (Regent Street Campus), the Science Museum London (optical instruments, lanterns, slides, Pepper’s Ghost apparatus), the Royal Institution Library, and the British Newspaper Archive (advertising for Polytechnic lectures and exhibitions 1840s–1890s).

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MAGIC LANTERN WALKING STICK
Below, a very rare gentleman’s walking stick or cane, c. 1880s. It has a Magic Lantern in the handle.

^{All images de Luikerwaal}

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MAGIC LANTERN FACTORY BUILDING
From 1895 made in Germany by Georg Carette and Company. A tinplate body, lacquered with brown paint, decorated with windows, door and brick chimney. Cast-iron base. Size 14.17 inches in height.

^{All images de Luikerwaal}

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MAGIC LANTERN GOTHIC CATHEDRAL
An extraordinary Magic Lantern in the shape of a Gothic cathedral. Made of copper. A cross originally decorated the spire. The sizes of the base are 8.24 inches x 5 inches.

Manufacturer unknown.

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MAGIC LANTERN PENCIL SHARPENER
Die cast metal pencil sharpener in the shape of a vintage Magic Lantern Film Projector. Lens moves in and out by means of a real rack and pinion focusing system.

^{All images de Luikerwaal}

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c. 1885
ANTHONY & CO. BELLOWS CAMERA W/ DUAL LENS
This rare Anthony and Company dual lens camera can take individual or Stereoscopic photographs.

^{Images Antigüedades Técnicas}

^{Images Antigüedades Técnicas}

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This camera is itemized by professionals and collectors to be so rare that no other camera of this model is known to be for sale in the private market worldwide at this time, being found only in collections and museums.

^{Images Antigüedades Técnicas}

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This dual-lens bellows camera was manufactured by Edward and Henry T. Anthony of New York in 1885–the largest manufacturer and distributor of cameras and photographic equipment in the United States. It has Waterbury Lenses manufactured by the Scovill Manufacturing Company, New York.

^{Images Antigüedades Técnicas}

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The beautiful camera we see in the images has a light mahogany wood body, with moving parts connected to each other by brass fittings.

^{Images Antigüedades Técnicas}

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It has black leather bellows and two lenses with attachments for easy exchange between individual lens photography, or Stereoscopic photography. This camera bears the brand and the manufacturer’s name engraved on the brass.

^{Images Antigüedades Técnicas}

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The photographer can interchange the lens holders and thus use the camera to take standard single-lens or Stereoscopic dual-lens photographs.

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This rare Anthony and Company dual lens Stereoscopic camera measures: Width: 30 cm. Height: 21 cm.

^{Images Antigüedades Técnicas}

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By 1873 Anthony and Company may have had as many as 11,000 Stereoviews for purchase, although the total was essentially less since some images never had actual numbers assigned and therefore it would be hard to be accurate.

_{Image Larry S. Pierce Collection}

1886+
MAGIC LANTERN HISTORY
This popular Magic Lantern image we have all seen, is taken from Magic Lantern Alphabet of Animals, published by Raphael Tuck and Sons, not before 1886.

Here is what Princeton University’s Exhibition on Magic Lanterns has to say about it;

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The concealed Vest Camera of Gray and Stirn was nickel plated and each exposure was 1 and 3/4 inch in diametre. It sold for approximately $10 US and came packaged in a way that allowed a tripod to be used.

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The Gray and Stirn Vest Camera came in different packaging. The wooden carry case was one of them. It had sliding front doors to allow pictures to be taken from the case.

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Størmer wanted a picture of a young lady he liked and being too shy to greet her, he decided to get her picture without her knowing.

In his biography for the Fellows of the Royal Society, he confessed that his interest in photography was stimulated by a veiled affection.

The end result four years later, was approximately 500 private photographs that show a wide range of people in a casual and unknowing state.

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Being a Norwegian student at the start of his stealth pastime, Størmer left us with a wealth of casual Norwegian street life photography in the 1890s.

All taken with a concealed Vest Camera of Gray and Stirn from 1886. Sourced through Jessica Stewart | My Modern Met.

^{Sourced through Jessica Stewart | My Modern Met}

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^{Sourced through Jessica Stewart | My Modern Met}

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Størmer had a successful career as a mathematician and physicist, teaching for 43 years at the University of Oslo.

A crater on the dark side of the moon is named after him.

^{Sourced through Jessica Stewart | My Modern Met}

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Carl Størmer merged photography with his day job. He was the first to advance precise photographic procedures to compute heights and morphologies of varied auroral forms (study of Aurora Borealis) over the course of four solar cycles.

^{Images Auction Team Breker}

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^{Sourced through Jessica Stewart | My Modern Met}

1886
REVOLVING PHOTOGRAPHIC BACKGROUND AND FOREGROUND
ISAAC AUGUSTUS WETHERBY (1819–1904)
Wetherby wasn’t just an inventor; he was a multifaceted artist who bridged painting and early photography in the American Midwest. Born in New York, he started as a portrait painter in Boston before embracing photography and buying his first camera in 1841.

By 1854, he set up a studio in Iowa City, Iowa, drawn by the area’s growth after it became the state capital. Wetherby’s invention, patented 16 March 1886 № 337904, reflects the era’s push for efficiency in photography, just as the medium was exploding in popularity.

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He filed it while residing in Iowa City, Iowa, where he was a prominent photographer and artist. The invention was designed to streamline studio photography by allowing quick changes of scenic backdrops and foreground elements without disrupting the shoot.

I. A. Wetherby’s patent № 337904, figures 1 and 2 from 16 March 1896.

This was essentially an early “set changer” for photo studios, predating modern green screens or digital backdrops. At the time, photography involved elaborate painted scenes (flats) for portraits, like rustic farms or elegant parlors, but swapping them was tedious. Wetherby’s device solved this.

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A revolving platform (mounted on wheels or rollers) that could be turned via a simple lever. A central vertical frame divided into four radial sections, each holding interchangeable ‘flats’ (backdrop panels) and matching foreground props (e.g., a boat, chair, or table).

I. A. Wetherby’s patent № 337904, figure 3 from 16 March 1896.

The platform spun to position the desired scene directly behind the subject, with even light diffusion from a rooftop turret (a common studio feature). The camera stayed fixed on the floor, but a slight adjustment allowed for multiple angles of the same subject against the same backdrop, being handy for creating varied compositions in one session.

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“The essential feature of the invention is sufficiently illustrated in the accompanying drawings, which form a part of this specification, and in which Figure 1 is a top plan view of an ordinary gallery arranged according to my invention. Fig. 2 is a similar view taken from above the roof, part of the turret being broken away to show the internal arrangement of the gallery. Fig. 3 is a side elevation with parts in section.”  ─ A portion of I. A. Wetherby’s patent № 337904, 16 March 1896

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As his patent states, Wetherby’s invention divided the studio platform into four quadrants, enabling four distinct scenes ready to go. This sped up sessions, reduced labor, and let photographers like Wetherby handle more clients efficiently in his Iowa City studio.

_{Images Our Iowa Heritage}

The main claim emphasizes the combo of the revolving platform, four-section frame, interchangeable scenes/props, and fixed camera for seamless operation.

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This was essentially an early “set changer” for photo studios, predating modern green screens

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Even though Wetherby pioneered Daguerreotyping portraits, by 1886, Daguerreotypes were extinct commercially and had been replaced by the Ambrotype and Wet Collodian processes. He adapted these into his work and his work is preserved in places like the University of Iowa Libraries and the Old Capitol Museum, which has hosted exhibits on his photos, most recently in 2017.

_{Images Our Iowa Heritage}

1886
LOUIS AIME AUGUSTIN LE PRINCE (1841-1890)
On the same day in the US (10 January 1888) that his patent was issued for a “Method of and Apparatus for Producing Animated Pictures of Natural Scenery and Life,” the same device was also registered in the UK.

The application describes “one or more lenses.” This clipping is likely from a 1930s British newspaper or scientific journal (such as The Illustrated London News or The Sphere), or potentially a historical book on the history of cinematography published around that time.

In 1930, Marie Le Prince (the daughter of Louis donated this camera to the Science Museum in London. The clipping supports this with ‘Reproduced by courtesy of the Science Museum, London.’

This donation sparked a wave of revival articles in the early 1930s that aimed to restore Le Prince’s reputation as the Father of Cinematography over Thomas Edison and others.

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The application was dated 2 November 1886 and the machine was simply known as the LPCC 16-lens receiver and deliverer. Leeds-based Le Prince biographer Irfan Shah tells me that although designed to shoot on strips of film, it likely photographed on a large glass disk.

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Shah believes a large glass disk sat behind the lenses capturing the images and not Eastman paper film which has been reported on by others. He told me;

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“I have succeeded in producing the movement of a man walking.”

Le Prince told his wife Lizzie in a letter dated 2 February 1888 [Roundhay Garden and Leeds Bridge were both filmed October 1888] when Jack the Ripper was prowling Whitechapel.

Despite projection issues, he must have seen these moving pictures in order to have said he had succeeded.

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These frames of Man Walking Around a Corner were photographed on a single large glass plate and both pre date the motion photography of Roundhay Garden and Leeds Bridge which were each photographed on Eastman paper film later, in October 1888.

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The full description of the patent can be seen and read here in full at Google Patents.

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Richard Howells quote from ‘Louis Le Prince the Body of Evidence,’ Screen, Volume 47, Issue 2, 1 July 2006, pp179–200.

“Le Prince had indeed succeeded making pictures move at least seven years before the Lumière brothers and Thomas Edison and so suggests a rewriting of the history of early cinema.”

_{– Richard Howells, Louis Le Prince: The Body of Evidence, Screen, Volume 47, Issue 2, 1 July 2006, pp179–200}

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The Deville guidebook originally published in 1889 was republished in 2013 due to being found “culturally important” by Nabu Press and available today at Amazon.

^{Left image Roberta Bondar Foundation}

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ROCKY MOUNTAIN PHOTOGRAPHY
Photogrammetry had been proposed in France in the early 1850s. In 1886 Deville used a camera to examine the mountainous Canadian Pacific Railway belt in British Columbia and invented what is also known as Phototopography.

^{Left photo Bill Edgar, Right photo Mike Danneman}

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Pictured here are two grandchildren of the Edouard Deville Photographic Surveying Perspectograph commonly known as plotters.

He took over his father’s photography business in Lissa in 1868, focusing on portrait photography and decorative painting. The Schnellseher of Anschütz is a motion picture device introduced in Germany using a Geissler vacuum tube to illuminate his Electrotachyscope.

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With Anschütz’s Electrical Tachyscope viewers witnessed an exciting impression of life-like action. As the operator turned the wheel, the pictures on it were projected through an aperture into the next room.

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Anschütz invented the Electrotachyscope (or Schnellseher), a device displaying short motion picture loops using 24 glass plate photographs on a rotating wheel, illuminated by a Geissler tube, achieving about 30 frames per second. Demonstrations from 1887 to 1894 at international exhibitions and arcades were highly successful, attracting thousands.

In 1894, he introduced a projector version, screening life-sized moving images (6×8 metres) in Berlin, with a notable show in 1895 drawing around 7,000 paying visitors. The instrument was unable because of its construction and design to be viewed by more than a handful at once, as opposed to a projecting device, which could entertain hundreds. The Electrotachyscope operated as a large stroboscopic disk revolving rapidly.

Below two images of the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

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He photographed military maneuvers, animals, and Otto Lilienthal’s flights, contributing to both science and art. His work influenced fellow pioneers like Thomas Edison and Georges Demenÿ, though he withdrew from Chronophotography around 1894 due to the limitations of early celluloid film, which didn’t meet his high standards for image quality.

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Here from Henry Hopwood’s Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-Production and Practical Working (Henry Vaux Hopwood, Optician and Photographic Trades Review, London, 1899) on pages 49 and 50.

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On the left is Anschütz’s Electrical Tachyscope write-up that appeared in the Scientific American issue of 1 January 1889.

And on the right are the Schnellsehers (the rectangular upright boxes at the base of each of the pillars) at the German Department of Electricity Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893.

Right photo by The Werner Company, official photographers to the Exposition.

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Here are some Schnellseher facts from historian Deac Rossell in a piece he wrote for Stephen Herbert’s The Optilogue.

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Projecting Electrotachyscope schematic showing double-disc projector with transparencies from glass negatives, 1894. From Stephen Herbert, The Optilogue.

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The Schnellseher held around its circumference, the photographs which were illuminated by an initial spark thereby providing electric rapid vision. The disk contained fewer than 100 images, limiting its use almost from the start.

The viewers watched the motion at around eye level. Below, is a modern-day (2014) reconstruction of the Anschütz Electrotachyscope made by Nicola Kinch.

^{Images Nicola Kinch}

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SEE the Nicola Kinch reconstructed Elektrischen Schnellseher of Ottomar Anschütz in action in this short video produced by Nicola.

1886
CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY OF A FROG’S BEATING HEART
WILLIAM GILMAN THOMPSON
Little historical attention has been devoted to this physician who in October of this year, photographed a pumping heart Chronophotographically and purely for motion picture purposes. Thompson’s work predates narrative motion pictures and aligns more with experimental, scientific Chronophotography akin to Marey or Muybridge but used for physiological observation.

He wasn’t filming live motion in the modern sense; instead, he recorded sequential still photographs to capture movement over time. These could potentially be analyzed in sequence to study cardiac motion—a primitive but clever form of visualizing physiology.

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Pictured is his Chronophotographic camera, looking more like a catamaran which is in fact, what Thompson called it. Top left shows the hand crank. Centre is the plate to hold an object to be captured. Another account confirms that he exhibited an impressive series of photographs showing the movements of the heart and intestines, likely referring to this Chronophotographic work.

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Other Chronophotographers inspired Thompson to employ photography in medicine as Messter had, and he built a Chronophotographic camera where pictures could be mounted on a disc that turned intermittently by means of a handle. The camera design is crank-operated, with a rotating disk mechanism to mount plates—six exposures per full revolution—as captured in the illustration from the 1886 Scientific American Supplement. The image sequence of the frog’s beating heart is preserved as a series of six instantaneous photographs—a primitive version of motion capture, intended for scientific observation rather than entertainment.

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This work marks one of the earliest scientific Chronophotography experiments, where motion—specifically, a frog’s heartbeat—was documented methodically for study. Although not a movie in the modern, narrative sense, Thompson’s setup clearly aimed at recording sequential movement, aligning with early cinematographic objectives. It’s a tangible stepping-stone in the evolution of both medical visualization and early motion picture technology.

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this physician photographed a pumping heart of a frog, chronophotographically, and purely for motion picture purposes

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Four years later in 1890, this same doctor Gilman tried the first brain tissue xenotransplants between cats and dogs. READ Scientific American Supplement, volume XXII, No. 564, published 2 October 1886, on page 8966 of Dr. Thompson’s Chronophotography at Internet Archive.

Thompson’s device employed a rotating disk mechanism that enabled six rapid exposures per full revolution, capturing the beating heart of a frog in sequential frames, early Chronophotography designed specifically for visualizing movement. Chronophotography, conceived by pioneers like Muybridge and Marey, gained a solid foundation through lesser-known figures such as Thompson, highlighting the broader, underappreciated layers in cinema’s technical development.

1886
COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY
JONAS FERDINAND GABRIEL LIPPMANN (1845-1921)
Lippmann was a Franco-Luxembourgish physicist and inventor best known for developing the first practical method for colour photography, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908. Born in Hollerich, Luxembourg, to French parents, Lippmann grew up in Paris and showed early brilliance in science. His colour photography technique, based on the interference of light waves (now called Lippmann photography), used a photographic plate coated with a light-sensitive emulsion to capture colours directly from light interference patterns, producing strikingly accurate colour images without dyes or pigments—a groundbreaking achievement at the time.

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Lippmann exploited a concept known as wave interference, which involves the transmission of light waves.

Lippmann had presented his process in 1906, along with colour photographs of a country road (seen below), and vases of flowers.

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Lippmann’s use of wave interference in creating colour photographs did not compare to the Autochrome, which by 1907 was about to make it’s appearance and was going to blow people away.

However, as a pioneer in this field attempting to reach that perfect colour image, I give Lippmann an A for effort.

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Here, from Helmut and Alison Gernsheims The History of Photography – From the Camera Obscura to The Beginning of The Modern Era (Thames and Hudson, London, 1969), is the Gersheim explanation of three-colour photography, on p521.

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Wave Interference explained, thanks to the Physics Classroom. https://www.physicsclassroom.com/

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Lippmann now used the scientific discovery of wave interference to produce the photographs I’ve shown.

Here is what the wave interference that Lippmann manipulated, looks like.

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Lippmann is pictured here working in his lab, on the left. The final picture is a colour self portrait from his colour wave interference process. Another step closer to cinematography as we know it today.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his discovery.

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Produced by Nick Brandreth at You Tube https://www.youtube.com/@nickbrandreth , and brought to my attention by PARALLAX-SHIFT at X https://x.com/p4ra114x_5h1f4 , Nick has fashioned three of these videos on the Lippmann colour plate and this is the first. As he states in his description;

“A Lippmann plate is the only natural color process. There is no color in these plates, no dyes or no pigments. What you’re seeing in the break down of white light into its individual color wave lengths due to thin layers of ultra fine grain silver in the emulsion. Think of it like and oil slick in a parking lot, there is no color in the oil slick, but a thin layer of oil breaking up the white light.” Runs 5 minutes.  

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►►1896
Ten years later Melville will receive another patent for an improved Flip Book № 20136 on11 Sept 1896 entitled “A New Device by which the Leaves of Picture and other Books may be Turned Over in a Regular Manner.” [sic].

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1896
On 10 August, Watilliaux and Clarapède patent yet another Flip Book № 256039 for a “device giving the illusion of movement through the quick succession of photographs or drawings.” Gaston Tissandier shared with his readers the Folioscope in his La Nature published on 21 March 1896.

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Mimicking Casler’s Mutoscope, the Watilliaux / Clarapède schematic and description clearly illustrate the working of this rotating drum of pictures. Taking into account the Chronophotography of Demeny, Watilliaux foresaw that he could apply the device as a way;

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They may have been dreaming of our now-forgotten Rolodex.

Or they may have been referring to what I call the Magic Book Wheel of one Nicolas Grollier de Servière, who in the 17^th century built one of the grandest cabinets of curiosity in Lyons.

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Talk about flipping a book.
Round Bookshelf @geekupdated and a Circular Bookcase @toxel both at Twitter.

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1897
Englishmen John O’Neill and Robert McNally patent a Flip Book, now with photographs;

“The figures may illustrate a prize fight, a wrestling match, a skirt dance, skipping, which has the effect of producing an optical illusion as perfect as it is amusing and interesting.”

The Animal Locomotion catalogue lists the horse’s name, plate number, and technical data (camera setup, exposure intervals), but never names the rider. Archival commentary from the University of Pennsylvania and the Smithsonian’s Muybridge collections confirm that no official record of the riders’ identity survives.

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This camera made by Louis Le Prince in 1887 took a series of pictures using 16 independent shutters, one on each lens, and taken in sequence. Pictured below is a front and back view.

^{Image SSPL/Getty}

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“I have succeeded in producing the movement of a man walking”

^{– In a letter to Lizzie dated 2 February, 1888 [Roundhay was 14 October] (Fischer p210)}

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“Le Prince had indeed succeeded making pictures move at least seven years before the Lumière brothers and Thomas Edison and so suggests a rewriting of the history of early cinema.”

_{– Richard Howells, Louis Le Prince: The Body of Evidence, Screen, Volume 47, Issue 2, 1 July 2006, pp179–200}

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From Henry Hopwoods Living Pictures on pp52 and 53 we see same and similar illustrations of Le Prince’s 16 lens camera (figures 53 and 54) and a very detailed explanation of its workings.

1887
WILLIAM EDWARD FRIESE-GREENE (1855-1921)
Friese-Greene had been working on synchronizing the Phonograph with his own projector. History shows he never accomplished this dream even though he wrote to Edison with no response. His papers do however quote him as writing;

In 1913 Edison divulged perhaps why he did not answer the Friese-Greene letter, when he stated;

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Blending every-day science with the newly emerging graphic arts and then publishing it into educational children’s literature is something we see with pre cinema themes throughout the second half of the 1800s.

Optical technology in particular is being highlighted within the arts.

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1887
WALLACE GOOLD LEVISON (1846-1924)
A chemist by profession and photographer by hobby, Levison shows his “drum-shaped serial apparatus loaded with 12 plates, 8 1/4×10 3/4 cm ” to the Academy of Photography in Brooklyn (now called the New York Photo Academy) on 13 June.

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Levison described tapes or ribbons that were moved intermittently using the same set-up as the drum in his patent № 578249, which was filed on 25 June.

Below, Dates and Sources, Liesegang F. P., Berlin, 1926, pp77, 78 translated.

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Levison refers to a “drawing on the screen” inferring that he was using a lantern to project pictures or illustrations of his camera

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A detailed explanation of this motion picture camera can be found in The Philadelphia Photographer, New York Citizen and Brooklyn Daily Eagle which is the one pictured below. They were all published in 1888.

Levison’s method of moving the ribbon was via a drunken screw.

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Here, taken directly from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle of 14 June, 1888 on the front page, are the words of Levison himself in describing his unnamed camera to a meeting of 30 witnesses including his constructed camera, and illustrations apparently cast onto a screen.

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All photographs I am showing were taken by Wallace Goold Levison.

🎞️ A young lady named Ethel Merritt
🎞️ Another little girl named Edith Poey jumps off a wooden pole
🎞️ A bunch of girls jump off a stone wall
🎞️ Two sisters: Isabel Harter rides a tricycle, and Nellie

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Levison did make a small name for himself in the world of New York photography that revealled a fascination for motion pictures

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All photographs I am showing were taken by Wallace Goold Levison.

🎞️ Associate J. M. Cornell jumps
🎞️ Mildred Grimwood jumps off a chair
🎞️ New York Tribune building in lower Manhattan
🎞️ Daughter Zelma Levison jumps in the backyard of her home

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First let’s take a look at some different angles of the Levison machine that was found buried deep inside the Smithsonian.

^{These images from Peter Domankiewicz and The Smithsonian National Museum of American History}

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Later in 1903 Levison developed his Fluorescent Mineral Viewing Box.

He based it on the recently introduced hand-held Fluoroscope, a newly introduced device that allowed doctors to view real-time X-Ray images of patients.

^{Images and source Daniel Russell}

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Lauste can be included in the debate of who was the first to produce a practicable sound-on-film system

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Here are four photographs showing Lauste’s working quarters in London. In the first photograph (top left) we see the Lauste sound-on-film system in operation outside.

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WATCH an Eidoloscope be assembled in this :58 second video from Objectif 3D.

1887-1890
EDISON AUTOMATON TALKING PHONOGRAPH DOLL
Here we have the Edison talking Phonograph doll that recites Jack and Jill. Housed at the Smithsonian, it was patented in 1878, manufactured in 1887 and marketed in 1890.

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Between 1889 and 1890, Edison’s 1878 phonographic doll led to the production of many knock-off talking automaton dolls.

The doll spoke by means of a scaled-down Phonograph inside its body, which played nursery rhymes like Mary Had a Little Lamb.

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A more modern version 80 years latter was made by Remco called Baby Laugh ‘a ‘Lot. Chatty Cathy also comes to mind. Baby Laugh ‘a ‘Lot didn’t scare the kiddies, they just died from laughter.

Here is the original commercial from 1970.

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In 2011, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory recovered the earliest surviving talking doll recording Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

Recorded in 1888, it resides at the Thomas Edison National Historical Park, West Orange.

LISTEN here.

^{Record format: Edison talking doll tin cylinder Location: Edison Laboratory, West Orange, New Jersey Recording date: circa November 1888 NPS object catalog number: EDIS 1279}

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Edison’s talking dolls: child’s toy or stuff of nightmares? SEE a short :49 second video on the history of Edison’s automaton talking phonograph doll which would have scared me to tears as a child.

1887
THE ELECTRIC AUXANOSCOPE
GUSTAVE TROUVE (1839-1902)
Trouvé was a French electrical engineer and inventor, often called the French Edison for his innovative contributions in the 19th century. Born in La Haye-Descartes, France, to a modest family (his father was a cattle dealer), Trouvé showed early mechanical talent, building a miniature steam engine at age seven. Below, an engraving depicting Trouve’s Electric Auxanoscope for projecting very large opaque pictures and objects onto a screen using electrical power. He moved to Paris, working as a clockmaker before establishing a workshop in 1865, where he focused on electrical innovations.

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Trouve’s Electric Auxanoscope was an electric projector equipped with an exceptional 70-watt incandescent lamp with a parabolic reflector and focal lenses. In the shape of a flashlight, or as the English say, a torch.

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Trouvé invented the Auxanoscope, an electric projection device, as documented in La Pratique des Projections by H. Fourtier, published by Gauthier-Villars in Paris in 1892. On page 140, Fourtier describes Trouvé’s Auxanoscope, and the text is accompanied by an illustration of the device. The Auxanoscope is the first electric compact Magic Lantern for projecting drawings, photographs, models, or any opaque objects. Trouvé patented the Auxanoscope on 21 September 1887 (French patent № 185,991).

It was a compact projector using a 70-watt incandescent bulb, designed to project images of opaque or transparent objects, offering a practical alternative to gas or oil-based lighting systems used in earlier projection devices. Fourtier notes four models of the Auxanoscope, with variations for projecting opaque objects (similar to a megascope) and transparent slides, one specifically developed for the Ligue de l’Enseignement. These were showcased at the 1887 Congress of the Association Française pour l’Avancement des Sciences in Toulouse, as well as at the Société Internationale des Électriciens and the Société de Physique.

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the Auxanoscope is the first electric compact Magic Lantern for projecting drawings, photographs, models, or any opaque object

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This illustration of the Auxanoscope on the left, [figure 65) is taken from La Pratique Des Projections, H. Fourtier, Gauthier-Villars Editeur, Paris, 1892, p140.

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Gustave Trouve was a French electrical engineer and inventor of many things.

N.B. The Auxanoscope has been mistakenly referred to as the Megascope of 1770.

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WORLD’S FIRST ELECTRIC VEHICLE (1880)
He fitted a Siemens electric motor and rechargeable battery to a James Starley tricycle, tested successfully in Paris in 1881, though he couldn’t patent it.

Trouve was a prolific inventor and innovator, possibly out-inventing Edison. Trouve was known to have patented close to 100 inventions, including this electric 3-wheel car and boat; an electric rifle, an electric piano and luminous fountains of which I have talked about, remember Colladon?

Awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 1881, Trouvé was celebrated in publications like La Nature but remained modest, a confirmed bachelor uninterested in commercialising his work like Tobar in Spain. Unlike Nikola Tesla, he never sought fame in America.

In 1902, while working on his UV therapy device, he accidentally cut his thumb and index finger, neglected the wound, and died of sepsis on 27 July 1902, at age 63 in Paris. His archives were lost in a 1980 fire, and his tomb’s concession in Descartes lapsed, leaving his remains in a common grave.

Rediscovered through historian Kevin Desmond’s efforts, including a 2012 French biography and a 2015 English one, Trouvé’s legacy was honored with plaques at his birthplace (2012) and Paris workshop (2016). A 2019 exhibition in Descartes and the 2020 Gustave Trouvé Awards for electric boats further revived his recognition.

SEE Dusel the workhorse here on plate 563, pages 1142 and 1143, volume III of Animal Locomotion’ in 1887 at Internet Archive.

He patented it under the name of Photographic Pellicle. His patent (opening page below) took eleven years to be finally granted, in 1898. By this time celluloid had been pretty much perfected for the time, and better quality as well.

E. J. Marey immediately began to use this new Cellulose Roll Film in his work. Below is patent Nº 610861 for Goodwin’s Photographic Pellicle and Process for Producing Same granted 13 September 1898.

1887
THE SCHNELLSEHER
OTTOMAR ANSCHÜTZ (1846-1907)
According to Holger Anschütz, the great-grandson of Chronophotographer Ottomar Anschütz whom I recently interviewed, “The Elektrischen Schnellseher was first demonstrated in the US at the Photographic Exhibition on 22 April, 1887.”

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1889
Speaking to me from Germany, Holger told me his great grandfather’s Electrical Tachyscope (Elektrischen Schnellseher) “was illustrated on 16 November, 1889 in Scientific American Vol. 61, No. 20” and sure enough, on the front page is that famous illustration.

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In 1890 Anschütz took a series of nine dogs jumping over a ditch that Rossell called Hundemule which Holger states is not a German word, and that the proper name is Hundemeute meaning pack of dogs.

He told me these images “were produced by Ottomar Anschütz for the Electrical Tachyscope.”
Nine images would not look like motion.

_{Image Deac Rossell, Chronology of the Birth of Cinema, 1833–1896, 2022, pp82}

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1890
Rossell tells us (Chronology of the Birth of Cinema, 1833–1896, pp82, 83) that “on 15 March this year, Anschütz demonstrated the Schnellseher for the press at the United States Photographic Supply Company, 3 East 14th Street, New York City….”

His work is considered natural Chronophotography as was Boys and Kohlrausch. Thompson and Londe are two examples of Chronophotographers who utilised Schlieren photography which I have spoken on before.

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1888
THORNTON PICKARD IMPERIAL ENLARGER
The Thornton-Pickard Imperial Magic Lantern was an enlarger for 1/4 plate glass negatives. Pickard was a well-known British camera maker est. in 1888. Cedar wood and brass.

^{Image Laterna Magica Museum Collection}

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The Imperial magic lantern by Thornton-Pickard was a horizontal enlarger for quarter plate glass negatives. Thornton-Pickard, founded in 1888, was a well-known British camera maker. The business was situated near Manchester and a Pioneer in the development of the camera business from the beginning.

This glass plate enlarger was fashioned of cedar wood with a metal housing, a brass and glass lens, aluminum fittings, and a black fabric.

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Marey’s revolving disk gun cameras achieved high speeds and much shorter intervals than Muybridge’s method. They were also lighter, less cumbersome and obviously portable.

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Later in 1889, Marey further communicated to the Academie on his experiments and progress. Below, a clear view of the film option in the attachable magazine, and the glass plates in the stock housing.

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Stay tuned because later I’m going to show you another Marey rifle camera from a few years later, in future posts. Below is what Marey had to say to the Academie des Sciences in 1889 on his Fusil Photographique;

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From Magic; Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography by Albert Allis Hopkins, (Sampson Low and Marston, London, 1897) on pp466, 476, 477, 478 we see a complete breakdown of the E. J. Marey Fusil Photographique.

1888
CELLULOID FOR THE MAGIC LANTERN
WALTER POYNER ADAMS (1866-1953)
Adams proposed a celluloid film band for use in the Magic Lantern in 1888 to replace glass slides, which was a significant idea in the shift from photography to cinematography. Even though it had been considered and tried by others.

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Adams said that “gelatin, align compounds and celluloid are suitable for this purpose.” He wanted the strip of photographs to be on rollers, “wound on to one roller from another, so that each view passes the condenser in turn” and moved either manually or mechanically.

1888
THE SELBSTEINKASSIRENDER SCHAUSTELLUNGSAPPARAT
or THE SELF-CASHING SHOW APPARATUS
EBERHARD SCHNEIDER (1868-1919)
On 14 July German patent Nº 46561 was issued to Schneider for his Selbsteinkassirender Schaustellungsapparat named in the patent as a “Self-assessing Exhibition Apparatus.”

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A cross-section illustration of Eberhard Schneider’s Automatic Coin-Operated Stereoscopic Viewer. These Stereoscopic Viewers of which I have shown several here, were common and popular during this time.

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Having been sued by Edison, Schneider went on to make more cameras and projectors.

Deac Rossell states “Schneider claimed to have later worked on moving picture apparatus at the Krupp works in the early 1890s.” Image Soterios Gardiakos (Eberhard Schneider’s Cinematic Machinery).

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Schneider had a long stint at Proctor’s Pleasure Palace in New York (photo Byron Company, collection of the Museum of the City of New York) interior and exterior pictured.

The New York Tribune published a sketch of the exterior on 28 July, 1895.

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Schneider claimed to have later worked on moving picture apparatus at the Krupp works in the early 1890s

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His American Cinematograph and Film Company began in 1902. By 1904 Schneider introduced his Miror-Vitae projector. Images Rutgers University Library. Top left, the A. C. and Film Co. catalogue front cover from Rutgers University Library via Soterios Gardiakos.

^{Images Rutgers University Library}

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^{Images Edison National Historic Site}

The experimental and initially horizontal Kinetograph prototype camera made by Dickson 1889 – 1990, filmed a figure performing what looks like the action of waving at the camera.

This would be the second of the 3 Monkeyshines test films. Images the Edison National Historic Park.

^{Images Edison National Historic Site}

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On 31 August 1897 Edison received patent on the now-vertical Kinetograph, both below. This camera will film the first adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1910.

🎞️ Left image Performing Arts Archive
🎞️ Right image Wallace Reid Collection

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the film gauge was so small however, it was best seen through a microscope

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Just like Fred Ott, an Edison worker named Giuseppe Sacco Albanese was asked to star in all three films.

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The Cantilever was an image-enlarging apparatus, often made with a mahogany casing and brass components, including a lens by Ross of London. It functioned as a horizontal enlarger, using a gas burner, a crystal condenser to evenly distribute light, and an optical lens to project or enlarge images from glass plates (negatives or positives) onto a surface or photographic paper. The device’s bellows allowed for adjustable image sizing, and its name derives from the term “cantilever,” referring to the bellows mechanism (from the English term for a projecting beam or structure).

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The Hume Cantilever enlarging Magic Lantern was launched in 1888 and was advertised in the Transactions of the Edinburgh Photographic Society the same year.

Several versions of this model were produced over a ten-year period. The Cantilever was used in photography, art, design, architecture, and engineering for projecting or printing enlarged images. A preserved example is held in the Fundación Naturgy Collection.

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This instrument is made of mahogany and equipped with an expandable bellows. Inside there is a fireplace converted to electric lighting.

It has a large condensing lens and brass optics.

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In 1888 he announced his Cantilever Magnifier, then in 1891, the Nimrod model. In the French Kodak catalogue dated to January 1894, I found different models of the Cantilever lantern sold in France by The Eastman Photographic Materials Company Limited, a subsidiary of Kodak.

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Unlike many lanterns which could be fitted with different light sources (oil, oxy-hydrogen, electricity), the early Cantilever lanterns were built around a single lighting system, oil.

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The oil lamp had two wicks which were fixed on a wooden base also receiving the condenser which could be of different diametres.

Above it was attached the firebox and chimney, while in front were the magnifying bellows and lens. Some had a dual bellows.

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one of the first uses of the new plastics material called celluloid was for making denture plates

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This is an original Celluloid billiard ball made by Hyatt, from the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.

The plaque reads: “Made in 1868 of Cellulose Nitrate, Celluloid. The Year John Wesley Hyatt Discovered This First Plastics Resin.”

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Jessie Tarbox Beals is chronicled as the first published female photojournalist in the United States.

Jessie was the first woman to be hired as a staff photographer on a US newspaper, and the first to get a byline as a photojournalist. Three of her night photos pictured here.

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Beals and one of her award-winning low-light photographs.

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Beals was also known as a photographer of natural family settings.

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Besides low-light and home-life photography, Beals also made a name for herself photographing children both in active groups and in solitude.

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1888
CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY
While Kodak was introducing flexible film, Etienne Jules Marey began to make, with the help of Georges Demenÿ, short films intended to record the physiology of movement in humans & animals.

Now watch Pauvre Pierrot which is the cartoon animation depicted in the illustration above, which the audience is watching. This Théâtre Optique presentation simulated in the illustration, took place in 1892 at the Musée Grévin (now a children’s museum and theatre).

Also shown here below on the left, is how the projector operated behind-the-scene, as it was in fact operated behind the screen the audience was watching.

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WALT DISNEY PRESENTS
Here now is a clip from his TV show in the 1960s, a brief 10 minute and 25 second history on Charles-Émile Reynaud, focusing on first his Praxiniscope, then his Praxiniscope Théâtre, and then his Théâtre Optique patented in 1888. The animation shown is Autour d’une Cabine.

Following this Disney video on Reynaud, is a couple of additional minutes on Stuart J. Blackton’s The Enchanted Drawing and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, of which I will talk more on in the next chapter.

Walt Disney was an historian and connoisseur of animation history.

Carbutt made significant contributions to photography and early motion picture technology, notably as the first to use celluloid for photographic film and to market dry-plate glass negatives. Carbutt manufactures the 1st successful sheet-film at Hyatt’s Celluloid Manufacturing Company. Where Hyatt improved on Parkensine, Carbutt now takes the Celluloid strips of Hyatt and prepares them for the camera.

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Carbutt was the first to develop sheets of celluloid coated with photographic emulsion, creating celluloid film in 1888. He sliced thin plates from a rigid celluloid block and coated them with silver gelatin emulsion, producing what he called the “Celluloid Dry Plate.”

Around 1890, he manufactured 35mm-wide celluloid film for William Kennedy Dickson’s Kinetoscope, establishing the 35mm film standard still used in modern photography and filmmaking. This innovation replaced fragile glass plates and enabled the development of lighter, more practical cameras for amateur photographers and early motion pictures. Carbutt announced his product to the Photographic Society of Philadelphia and presented it to the Franklin Institute when he said;

“The substance I have the honour to bring to your notice tonight is this sheet celluloid, manufactured by the Celluloid Manufacturing Company.

It is some three or four years since I first examined into this material, but the manufacturers had not then perfected the finish of it to render it available, and it is only during this year that it has been produced in uniform thickness and finish, and I am now using at my factory large quantities of sheet celluloid 1/100 of an inch in thickness, coated with the same emulsion as used on glass, forming flexible negative films, the most complete and perfect substitute for glass I believe yet discovered . . . I will now show on the screen lantern transparencies from film negatives, both contact and reduced in the camera.”

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Carbutt founded the Keystone Dry Plate Works in 1879 seen in this left printed photograph and manufactured sheets of Celluloid coated with emulsion for making film in 1888.

He sliced off thin plates from a Celluloid block and coated them with silver gelatin making dry plates. Right, how the building looked in 2021.

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In 1890 Carbutt made film in a 35 mm width for William K. L. Dickson’s Kinetoscope, which set the 35mm film standard for motion and still cameras.

That format is still the dominant format to this day, as the majority of high-end digital cameras also use a 35mm sensor.

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1888
LOUIS AIME AUGUSTIN LE PRINCE (1841-1890)
A Frenchman working primarily in Leeds England, who earlier had emigrated to the US, Le Prince patents in the US and UK, a camera and projector described as having sixteen lenses stating in the application that it had “one or more lenses.”

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So close to being the first to project moving pictures publicly, he also applied for international patents in Belgium, Italy, Austria, Hungary, France, and in England, which he would never live to see granted.

In fact, the British patent described among other things; flexible film, (positive and negative)  and intermittent movement in the shutter. His apparatus was capable of showing animated pictures, which he had already presented in the Whitley factory in Leeds.

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“Method and Apparatus for The Projection of Animated Pictures in View of The Adaptation to Operatic Scenes.”

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LE PRINCE FILMS WHICH ARE EXTANT
We still have four of the animated pictures that Le Prince photographed.
They are;

Name	Date	Photography	Location
MAN WALKING AROUND A CORNER (16 frames remain originally from a glass plate-12 full and 4 incomplete frames)	* Photographed as early as August 1887 using the LPCC 16-lens camera		Photographed in Paris, France, Housed at National Science Museum, London
ROUNDHAY GARDEN SCENE (20 paper frames remain)	Photographed 14 October 1888 using the LPCCP MKLL single-lens camera (Le Prince’s 2nd single-lens camera)		Photographed in Leeds, UK, Housed at National Science Museum, London
ACCORDION PLAYER (19 paper frames remain)	Likely photographed 14 October 1888 using the LPCCP MKLL single-lens camera (Le Prince’s 2nd camera)		Photographed in Leeds, UK, Housed at National Science Museum, London
LEEDS BRIDGE SCENE (20 paper frames remain)	Photographed shortly after 14 October 1888 using the LPCCP MKLL single-lens camera (Le Prince’s 2nd single-lens camera)		Photographed in Leeds, UK, Housed at National Science Museum, London
	* Le Prince sent 8 of the 16 frames to New York on 18 August 1887 meaning filming took place before this

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SEE the Catherine Warr production Louis Le Prince: The Tragic Story of the Father of Film. Researched, written and presented by Catherine, she delves into both cameras, and his disappearance.

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Our performers in Roundhay Garden Scene were; son Adolphe Le Prince (young man); father-in-law Joseph Whitley (older man); mother-in-law Sarah Whitley (older woman); Annie Hartley (younger woman who died shortly thereafter).

Roundhay was projected on a screen at the Joseph Whitley factory in Leeds shortly after 14 October. The Louis Le Prince workshop on 160 Woodhouse Lane is pictured prior to demolition in the 1980s. It’s now owned by the University of Leeds. The memorial identifying the site of Le Prince’s workshop is seen.

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RECOMMENDED VIEWING is the first film (2015) produced and directed by David Nicholas Wilkinson, written by Wilkinson and Irfan Shah. Unfortunately, I cannot find anywhere where this is playing.

RECOMMENDED READING is The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, published in 2022 by Simon and Schuster and researched/written by Paul Fischer. A selected-page preview is available at Google Books.

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Interestingly, Le Prince never gave his cameras and projectors a name as did other pre cinema pioneer-inventors. They were simply known as the single-lens or the 16-lens, or by the patent number.

He did however in his patents, title his cameras as “receiver” which photographed, and his projector as a “deliverer.” The Le Prince family knew Louis Daguerre who had offered Louis some of his photographic know-how in 1875.

Le Prince had also seen much of the work by Muybridge.

The reprinted photograph above shows the rear view of the LPCCP MKLL single lens camera Le Prince used to photograph Roundhay Garden Scene, Leeds Bridge, and Accordion Player all in 1888 on Kodak Paper Film first produced by George Eastman in 1885.

By the width of the film we can see that it was 60mm wide.

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Left is a very primitive-looking sketch of his single lens projector drawn by Le Prince showing the paper film wrapping.

Right is a sketch of Le Prince’s three-lens projector made by James Longley.

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These animated pictures as they were identified in the LPCCP MKLL of 1888, clearly show the front of the house and front steps, as seen in Roundhay Garden Scene. Adolph is seen doing a two-step as he plays his diatonic button accordion on Joseph Whitley’s property on Oakwood Lane in Roundhay, Leeds.

The front steps are seen just to the left of the bay window.

I think we can all agree, that the camera was moved for each of these two movies and positioned differently.

For Adolph playing his accordion, the camera is positioned right in front of the steps, and for the circle-walkers it’s positioned further back in that large shadow in the bottom left corner.

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In his patent for the second-made single-lens camera (LPCCP MKLL) of 1888, Le Prince identified the machine as a “Method and Apparatus for The Projection of Animated Pictures in View of The Adaptation to Operatic Scenes.”

It photographed these now-famous scenes on 60mm Eastman paper film at the rate of twelve frames per second (Roundhay) and twenty frames per second (Leeds Bridge). This, according to Adolphe Le Prince himself subsequent interviews and commentaries and who I might add, was present at three of the four filming events namely Roundhay, Accordion Player, and Leeds Bridge.

Adolph was seen on-screen in two of those three and watched his father film Leeds Bridge from the window in the Hicks building. In all, there are 19 remaining frames of Accordion Player.

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As Leeds-based Le Prince biographer Irfan Shah tells us;

“Important to point out that the 1 or 2 seconds of Accordion Scene are all that survive BUT the original would have been longer. All three surviving sequences were originally longer. We are left with mere scraps of what he achieved.”

_{– Le Prince biographer Irfan Shah}

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In his book Accordion Revolution: A People’s History of the Accordion in North America from the Industrial Revolution to Rock and Roll, (with a few understandable and forgivable mistakes), author and historian Bruce Triggs @AccordionBruce (Twitter) calls this the “First movie musical and mystery!” as he explains …….

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This film would be the fourth and final film we would have of his work, which began in August 1887.

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According to Michael Harvey of the then National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in London (now the The National Science and Media Museum), “These only exist today as photographic copies, made in the 1930s, of parts of the paper film strips.” 

Notice that even horses travelled on the left in 1888 England.

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Le Prince knew the importance of his work and the impact these four Cinematographic episodes of common life would have on the world

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Both of these photographs are of the newer iron-span bridge over the River Aire in Leeds, which was built in 1945. The original stone bridge now long gone was opened on 9 July 1873.

The one on the right once again, indicates the angle and direction of filming. Both show the window.

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Adolphe Le Prince was The Accordion Player and the younger man in Roundhay Garden Scene, both photographed a few weeks before Leeds Bridge.

On the taking of his father’s film of Leeds Bridge, Adolphe (1872–1901) wrote in the third person, having been present;

The “second one-lens camera” Adolphe was referring to was his father’s LPCCP MKLL single-lens camera patented in London (1888) and Paris (1890). The first of the single-lens cameras he built was the LPCCP MKL, which has never been found, and none of the films it may have made. I do know that the US patent office refused his application for it.

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Here are two views of the bridge over the river Aire in Leeds UK. On the left, a photograph by an unknown photographer from October 1945 looking south along the bridge to Bridge End.

On the right, a more recent view. Both are pointing in the same direction as the 1888 film.

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On the left is a photograph from 1949 of the premises of Hick Brothers, ironmongers, and tinners, at 17-19 Bridge End in Leeds UK.

On the right is a 2021 Google street view of the building under refurbishment.

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Although never shown publicly or announced to the world officially, Le Prince presented his cinematography in the Whitley factory to the workers and Joseph Whitley, two years before Donisthorpe and Crofts Trafalgar Square footage (1890) and seven years before Skladanowsky (July and November 1895 at the Wintergarten Berlin) and Lumiere (workshop demonstration of the Cinematographe, 22 March 1895).

He even beat out fellow British pre cinema pioneers Acres, Paul, and Friese-Greene.

1888
HONOURABLE MENTION
EDWARD TUCKERMAN POTTER
British patent № 14171 for “Continuous Lantern Slides drawn from upper to lower spool by clockwork intermittent gear” is filed by E. T. Potter dated 2 October 1888. It was a provisional UK patent but was abandoned and never issued as fully granted. That is, I found bibliographic evidence of a provisional filing, but no actual, physically granted patent specification or drawings.

One academic source I found [Academia] explicitly calls it provisional and abandoned. There was a contemporary filing and an entry for Potter’s idea that shows up in patent digests and lantern histories but there’s no evidence that a full issued patent specification with drawings, survives as a published GB granted patent under that number.

So, we will treat Mr. Potter’s entry into the pre cinema historical record as a verified idea, but nothing more. This E. T. Potter should not be confused with the famous American architect of the exact same name who lived during the same period.

1888
WILLIAM EDWARD FRIESE-GREENE (1855-1921)
Friese-Greene develops a camera/projector utilizing a Celluloid band with perforated strips along the edge which he likely created himself.

In 1888 he used a Cinematographic camera to film a short piece of motion, but at five frames for every second but without a perforated edge.

^{Stephen Herbert Image}

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William Edward Friese-Greene is one of the giants in not only British, but world-wide pre cinema history. His contributions are historical to say the least.

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From Brian Coe’s book on page 55 is this caricature of Friese-Greene and as it says, is taken from The Bioscope issue of 9 April 1919.

In getting to know our pre cinema pioneers a little better, this photograph looks like it could be a self-portrait but I could be wrong. It shows Mr. and Mrs. Friese-Greene and their little daughter Ethel, c. 1880s.

A photograph of a much younger WEFG held at the National Science and Media Museum, and provided by Peter Domankiewicz.

William Friese-Greene is one of the giants in not only British, but world-wide pre cinema history. His contributions are historical to say the least.

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The founder James Pettibone took over a military goods store where he worked as a clerk, in 1872. They produced among other things, two versions of this attractive New Improved Electric Sciopticon with Revolving Disc (1888 and 1890). The top centre disc is an advertisement.

^{Images de Luikerwaal}

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The revolving disc that holds 10 small circular discs of glass with brightly coloured pictures gave this version its popular nickname of the Peacock.

It resembled a peacock when its tail has been fanned out.

^{Images de Luikerwaal}

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^{Image the Edison National Historic Site}

The Kinetograph itself photographed horizontally.

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The Aurora News-Register, Aurora, Nebraska July 18, 1891 picked up the story through the news wire and published this on the event;

^{Images and info obtained from Doug Boilesen, Phonographia, 2021}

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This illustration shows Dickson inside Edison’s Kinetographic Theatre using the Kinetograph during a filming session of Blacksmithing along with the Phonograph along the left wall.

The Kinetographic Theatre was on wheels, seen in the image on the right.

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Another of the films available to be seen by the public at the 9 May, 1893 demonstration was named Horseshoeing and although now lost, three frames do exist.

Reports state that at least 400 people saw these films through the Kinetoscope.

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The Scientific American had this to say about the public showing in their 20 May, 1893 edition;

“the members were enabled, through the courtesy of Mr. Edison, to examine the new instrument known as the Kinetograph.”

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1888
WILLEM LUDWIG FRANZ HALLWACHS (1859–1922)
Hallwachs was a German physicist born in Darmstadt and best known for his pioneering work on the photoelectric effect, initially called the “Hallwachs effect,” discovered in 1888. Hallwachs created a photoelectric (emissive) cell for use in a camera, showing that some objects emit electrons under sunlight. The 1st TV camera existed because of the orthicon tube. This phenomenon is known as photo emission.

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As a film is being shot, the sound is picked up by a microphone and converted into electrical impulses.

These impulses are used to drive a lamp or neon light tube that causes a flash, and this flash is recorded on the side of the film as a sound track.

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One kind of Stereopticon will have two projecting lanterns each with a lens placed one beside the other (horizontal), as in the image below on the right.

The second kind of Stereopticon has two projecting lanterns placed one above the other (vertical), as in the image on the left. They achieve the same projected result.

When the two separate lanterns were attached into one lantern with two lenses, they became known as Biunial Lanterns.

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OXY-CALCIUM LIGHTING
To ensure performances in large rooms could be seen by all, light was provided by oxy-calcium torches placed in the lantern. This was achieved with oxygen gas which had to be prepared before each screening because there were no suppliers in 1888.

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Here’s a four-page reference to, and illustrations for the Pamphengos figures11 and 12 taken from The Art of Projection and Complete Magic Lantern Manual by Expert, Published by E. A. Beckett, London, 1893, pp13-16.

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Méliès began showing films in his theatre from 1896 onward with split-screen effects, superimpositions, fade-outs, slow and stop-motion, double exposures and dissolves

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Méliès began showing films in his theatre from 1896 onward with split-screen effects, superimpositions, fade-outs, slow and stop-motion, double exposures and dissolves incorporated into the stories.

He brought his stage of magic to the silver screen using the very same theatre.

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Georges Méliès’ life work was honoured in more ways than only artistically. The French government honoured him for his Cinematic contribution in France with a postage stamp bearing his image.

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1888 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON (1847-1931)
and EADWEARD JAMES MUYBRIDGE (1830-1904)
Muybridge speaks with Edison again, about the possibility of amalgamating his Zoopraxiscope with Edison’s Phonograph in the hopes of producing sound pictures in the future.

Edison was already considering this idea in his New Jersey laboratories however it would be another forty years before becoming a reality.

Muybridge had been lecturing at Orange, New Jersey at the time, at the invitation of the New England Society.

But Edison later disputed this–in his notes, Edison scratched out the words . . . . .”No — Muybridge came to lab to show me picture of a horse in motion — nothing was said about phonograph.”

Piffard, a pioneer in both medicine and photography, developed patented photogenic (flash) cartridges designed to advance instantaneous photography. These cartridges were used to produce a bright flash of light, enabling better photographic exposure, particularly for his work in dermatology, where he captured detailed images of skin conditions.

The “Photogenic Pistol” combined Piffard’s passion for photography with his medical expertise. His work contributed to early advancements in photographic technology, and surviving examples of his cartridges have provided insight into his innovative approach. There’s also a reference to a Photogenic Pistol in the context of the National Museum of American History, associated with Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company from the 1880s-1890s.

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In response to Pfragner, Domankiewicz says; “William Friese-Greene did not patent celluloid in 1889 and did not project anywhere publicly in 1890.”

Here are images from scenes in Festival Films The Magic Box (1951) of WFG played by Robert Donat, filming the Hyde Park footage of 1889.

Regarding these frames from The Magic Box Domankiewicz reminds us, “It should be stressed that the camera shown in the film is not the one he used at that time. The stereoscopic camera came in 1890.”

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In the centre is a replica of the camera patented in 1889 by William Friese-Greene and engineer Mortimer Evans.

On the left is a frame from a Friese-Greene test film shot in 1891 on Kings Road, London. Also pictured here are the few frames we have left of that test film.

^{Image Peter Domankiewicz}

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As Domankiewicz tells us, Friese-Greene used a professionally made camera and exposed the Hyde Park frames we saw, in 1889.

Domankiewicz continues; “In 1891 he is also believed to have privately projected film at home.”

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If you’re wanting to know more about WFG I insist you visit William Friese-Greene & Me subtitled Casting new light on William Friese-Greene and other pioneers of early cinema.

Wash your mind clean and read the truth about this great pioneer.

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1889
PABLO MARIANO DÍEZ TOBAR (1868-1926)
Did Tobar define in a lecture, and then build, the Lumière Cinématographe six years before Auguste and Louis? Several sources state something like that happened in 1889.

In the very least we do know that Tobar did solve a problem that the Lumière’s had been struggling with.

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Tobar was a highly inventive man. And like most Spaniards I have found, are lovers of cinema and in particular, all things pre cinema.

In 1889, Tobar gave a discourse on what he called “the cinematograph.” In that talk, he shared a clue of how to project moving images.

Tobar defined in detail, that a mechanism was needed to permit intermittent stoppage between frames, helping the mind’s eye to see fluidity.

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In his lecture Tobar provided the solution to the major challenge that cinema inventors at the time faced in the construction of the cinematograph: the creation of fluidity and smooth movement in the device.

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Tobar’s complete disinterest for his own inventions led the French brothers to utilise the one thing missing for their Cinématographe–smooth intermittency

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Hearing of this idea of a mechanism permitting intermittent stoppage between frames, Flamereau spoke to Tobar, and with the consent of the lecturer, returned to France with permission to build the projector to Tobar’s actual specifications.

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Tobar gave Flamereau the rights to his projector, his notes, and mathematical formula for syncing of the cross and shutter.

The Spanish newspaper El Mundo Ciencia stated Díez “authorized with absolute disinterest any of the attendees to put into practice the ideas or concepts.”

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Having no interest in fame or wealth and being a priest, Tobar ceded his ideas to others without restrictions or compensation.

His complete disinterest for his own inventions led the French brothers to utilise the one thing missing for their Cinématographe–smooth intermittency.

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WATCH a twenty-minute video in Spanish with great visuals on Tobar and his no-name projector which is held in the Los Milagros Ethnographic Museum, in Baños de Molgas, Orense, Spain. Runs 20 minutes.

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Walter O’Reilly patented it in July 1888 № 10823. It was intended to be hidden within the user’s clothes. The advertising claimed; “No movement is too rapid for it – the racehorse at greatest speed, the flight of birds, even the lightning flash itself.” The patent, British Patent was granted on 26 July for a handheld camera designed to be compact and discreet. The camera was manufactured by W. Phillips in Birmingham and sold by the American Camera Company in London, despite the company’s name suggesting otherwise. It was marketed as a cheap and simple device, priced at 5 shillings, and designed for concealed use, capable of capturing 2¼ x 2¼ inch plates in its original Model 1, with a later Model 2 introduced in 1891 for larger 3¾ x 3¾ inch plates.

^{Images The Kodak Collection at the National Media Museum, Bradford}

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The Demon Detective Camera was a remarkably successful product, with advertising claiming an average sale of 2000 per week and 100,000 sold in twelve months. It was a significant item in the history of detective cameras, a category of cameras designed to be concealed and used for covert photography, reflecting the growing interest in surveillance and privacy in the late 19th century.A single exposure, metal camera in two models.

📷 Nº One had 2 ¼” x 2 ¼” plates
📷 Nº Two had 3 ¾” plates

Back-stamped with W. Phillips Birmingham.

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Advertising for the camera claimed it could “defy detection and could be used in Law Courts, Railway Carriages and Divorce Cases.”

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Here is an image of the Lanterne Magique manufactured by Arthur Léon Laverne of Paris, which is held in the Cinémathèque française collection. The apparatus is described as a metal-bodied lantern, manufactured from 1889, that incorporated a single-wick kerosene lamp and a built-in oil tank, with a hinged body to allow access to the light source.

_{Photos Stephane Dabrowski}

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This name plate is from The Society of Teaching by Light Projections, 1892.

Arthur Léon Laverne was active from at least 1877, retiring around 1890. He was one of the most important lantern makers of the 1880s in France. His company was the appointed supplier for the Ligue française de l’Enseignement (French League of Education), which promoted lectures illustrated by lantern slides throughout France.

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Haggar made his own films around 1902, most of which were distributed by Gaumont and Charles Urban / The Warwick Trading Company.

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THE LIFE OF CHARLES PEACE (1903)
Here is one of the few surviving films made by Arthur William Haggar. Running 14.32 minutes in its originality. Source: People’s Collection Wales at Casgliad y Werin Cymru

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This plaque in Aberdare, Wales (just North of Cardiff) at the Aberdare Market Square is dedicated to William Haggar.

Pre Cinema pioneer of the British film industry William Haggar. It is likely that this photo was taken prior to 1923, though I don’t have the exact date of the image.

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1889
ARTHUR BATUT (1846-1918)
Arthur Batut is the father of Kite Aerial Photography and is responsible for this camera-kite from 1889. Modern Cinematography thanks Batut for his early efforts.

^{From the collection L’espace Photographique Arthur Batut / Archives Department}

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The timing was determined by a slow burning fuse that was lit when the kite was launched. After the picture was taken, a white flag was dropped and the kite was reeled in.

Below, the same illustration of Batut’s camera, left from his book Aerial Photography by Kite, on p29.

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Here we read about the Arthur Batut Aerial photo-kite taken from The History of Photography – From the Camera Obscura to The Beginning of The Modern Era by Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969, pp508 and 509.

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A proposed illustration of how the kite and camera would look once built, from Batut’s book Aerial Photography by Kite, in 1890, p27.

Batut’s kite frame and his camera are both preserved in the Arthur Batut Museum in Labruguière, Tarn, France.

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An article appeared in the Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger of this year describing the apparatus;

“This instrument is pointed at a particular object and by turning the handle several photographs are taken each second. These are converted into transparencies, and placed in succession upon a long strip, which is wound on rollers and passed through a lantern of peculiar construction (also the invention of Mr. Friese-Greene), and by its agency projected upon a screen. When the reproduction of speech is desired this instrument is used in conjunction with the phonograph.”

The Kinetograph was an early motion picture camera, and its creation is closely tied to Thomas Edison’s laboratory, where Dickson worked. Serious work on the Kinetograph began in 1889. Dickson and his team initially experimented with recording micro-photographs on a cylinder, inspired by Edison’s phonograph.

However, by late 1889, after Edison met with French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey and was influenced by his work with roll film, the team shifted focus to using strips of celluloid film. This was a pivotal moment, as George Eastman’s newly available celluloid roll film in 1889 provided a flexible, durable, and transparent medium that Dickson found ideal for motion picture experiments.

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By 1890, Dickson, along with assistant William Heise, developed a mechanism for the Kinetograph that used perforated 35mm celluloid film with a stop-and-go (intermittent) motion to capture sequential images at speeds up to 46 frames per second, though early films like Dickson Greeting (1891) were often shot at 30 frames per second or slower. This 35mm film gauge, with perforations on both sides, became the standard for motion pictures for over a century.

The earliest surviving experimental films, such as Monkeyshines, No. 1, are believed to have been shot between 1889 and 1890 as tests of the Kinetograph. There is debate among scholars about the exact date, with some suggesting June 1889 (featuring John Ott) and others pointing to November 1890 (featuring G. Sacco Albanese). However, it has been shown without doubt, that the man in Monkeyshines 1, 2 and 3, is Albanese. These films were short and experimental, used primarily to test the camera’s capabilities.

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The Blacksmith Scene, seen in the image depicted in the above illustration. Also filmed in the Black Maria, it was photographed in 1893.

Charles Kayser and John Ott are two of the men. John was brother of Frederick Paul the-sneezer Ott, an Edison apprentice from age 14.

While Edison is often credited with the invention, modern historians attribute the bulk of the Kinetograph’s design and development to Dickson. Edison provided the vision and resources, but Dickson’s technical expertise and experimentation were critical to making the concept a reality. The collaborative nature of Edison’s lab meant other assistants, like William Heise and Charles A. Brown, also contributed, but Dickson is recognized as the primary innovator.

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Dickson’s contributions, particularly the Kinetograph and the 35mm film gauge, were foundational to the motion picture industry. His work on the Kinetograph enabled the creation of the first films in the United States, and the camera’s design influenced subsequent motion picture technologies. Despite Edison taking much of the public credit during Dickson’s lifetime, later scholarship, including a 1996 U.S. postage stamp honoring Dickson as a pioneer of motion pictures, has recognized his critical role.

Also pictured is a celluloid strip of two men boxing and the experimental horizontal model camera Kinetograph c. 1891 from Stephen Herbert, The Optilogue.

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this operator-less Magic Lantern vending machine required 10¢ to run

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The Victor Bonnet, Hippolyte Lissagaray, Armand Richard, and Alfred Richard patent went on;

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Their combined logic expressed a void to be filled that would satisfy the growing use and obvious desire for attendant-less machines that offered some of life’s pleasures–the emergence of the vending machine.

The patent read in part;

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This operator-less Magic Lantern vending machine required 10¢ to run. The interior viewing area would light up and the whirring sound of turning wheels was heard. It held a series of seven drawings passing from bottom to top, each of them stopping long enough to have a good look.

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Crofts’ name appears on the patent alongside Donisthorpe’s but not as a financier, lawyer, or promoter, but as a co-developer. This strongly implies active technical participation. While Donisthorpe was the visionary and public speaker, Crofts is believed to have done the mechanical work, possibly constructing the working model of their Kinesigraph, which was used to shoot their famous 1890 film of Trafalgar Square.

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Some historians suggest Crofts may have had engineering or mechanical experience though little biographical information survives to confirm his formal training. Crofts wrote about photography and optics in the 1880s, and his grasp of photochemical and mechanical principles suggests his contribution to the motion picture apparatus went beyond being a helper or assistant. Crofts is the unsung proto cinematographer and engineer in this story. If Donisthorpe had survived with only his ideas, nothing would have been captured I believe. And, if Crofts had lived longer, he might have been remembered as an early film pioneer in his own right.

These are Side (L) and Front (R) views of the Kinesigraph British patent №. 12921, filed 15 August, 1889, and granted on 15 November, 1890.

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Pictured are four photographs of a facsimile of the Kinesigraph replicated by the team of scholars at The Race to Cinema.

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The Trafalgar Square sequence, shot from the window of the Constitutional Club, Northumberland Avenue, London, is the only surviving film of the Donisthorpe- Crofts collaboration. It’s their claim-to-fame. How I see it happening in a chronological order, is;

🎥 Donisthorpe pitches the idea and helps write the patent
🎥 Crofts builds the prototype camera
🎥 Both men ascend to the Constitutional Club window (possibly with assistants)
🎥 Crofts sets up and operates the camera while Donisthorpe observes or directs
🎥 Crofts handles film processing or collaborates with a photographic lab
🎥 Donisthorpe takes credit later in public, especially once cinema rises in popularity

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Crofts may have also adapted photographic emulsions to match the exposure needs of rapid-sequence capture, which was not standard photographic practice in 1889–90. He operated the device during the filming of Trafalgar Square in 1890, almost certainly handling all technical preparation. The footage uses a circular or oval mask, likely reflecting Magic Lantern traditions and early snapshot formats. This masking demonstrates their experimental and transitional design indicating a visual device rather than a standardized film projection format.

These surviving frames offer a brief but poignant window into the state of proto cinematographic technology at the close of the 19th century. They confirm that Crofts’ mechanical design worked, although improvisational, and not polished. The film is both a groundbreaking milestone and a proof of concept, rather than a fully functional entertainment piece.

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The Trafalgar Square sequence, shot from Donisthorpe’s Constitutional Club window, is often attributed jointly to both men, though Donisthorpe claimed public credit. Crofts’ role in the shooting itself is unclear, but he almost certainly helped built or modified the apparatus used to capture it.

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Donisthorpe later claimed that Crofts “fell into despondency” when the invention failed to gain traction, a rather dismissive summary in my opinion. Crofts died in 1894, before cinema exploded. He never promoted the invention, and Donisthorpe who lived until 1914, claimed more public credit, even as his version of the events often downplayed or vaguely acknowledged Crofts.

Crofts didn’t leave any memoirs, or detailed technical papers. ‘Kinesigraph’ is from the Greek ‘kinesis’ meaning movement, and ‘grapho’ meaning to write. Crofts and Donisthorpe were cousins.

1889
EIFFEL TOWER MOVING PANORAMA
A metal model of the Eiffel Tower appeared in 1889 amongst the thousands of toys sold as souvenirs at the Exposition Universelle. This one took advantage of the love for anything that was optical in nature.

This optical toy was a Rolling and Scrolling Panorama. Looking down though the tower, a paper Panorama at the bottom of the wooden base can be viewed. The top of the tower was a Peephole which contained a lens that when you looked down into, it was quite similar to that of a microscope.

Within the base are located two wooden rollers with brass winders at the front of the base allowing a Panorama to be wound forwards and backwards. The Panorama consists of a title panel, followed by 17 views of Paris landmarks, concluding with a panel saying ‘Fin.’

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_{Image Marlborough Rare Books}

It is believed this Tour Eiffel optical toy is one of the very first marketed.

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These seven images were received onto one glass plate. This Photographischer Serien-Apparat was meant to have seven lenses. Each had a focal-plane shutter. Pressure using an elastic band tripped the shutters in sequence.

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The Photographic Serial Apparatus had a crank which when turned tripped the shutters and, would control the pauses amid exposures- the intermittency we often speak of. Here we see the patent No 53840 along with the Meyer explanation for how his apparatus would work.

^{Image Google Patents}

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Meyer designed his Chronophotographic Camera to capture speed on film. However, I am unable to find anything else and no images of his apparatus. If there were any photographs, history owns them. As for the camera itself, whether it was ever built is also unknown. Here is the patent schematic.

^{Image Google Patents}

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The Gordon Hendricks Motion Picture History Papers held at the Archives Centre, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute, contains 73 Boxes of research material with seven of them slide boxes. In box 21, item 2, I found three patents, one of which relates to Meyer’s No 53840.

It reads in bold;

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Research has not uncovered any images other than the patent I found. The patent has been verified by the German patent office.

The Meyer explanation of how his Photographischer Serien-Apparat worked, is described here;

PLATE CINEMATOGRAPH
W. SCHMIDT
A. CHRISTOPHE
From Eugene Trutat’s La Photographie Animée, published in 1899, we read about these two elusive gentlemen who proposed glass plates instead of celluloid. The year is not stated. “The use of celluloid films covered with sensitive gelatin in recording and projector devices presents several drawbacks, and among these one of the most serious is that which results from the high price of these kinds of preparations; thus, we can classify animated Photography up to now among the processes of great luxury or scientific curiosities. In order to remedy to a certain extent all, the drawbacks which result from the use of films, Therefore, [ed.] Messrs. Schmidt and Christophe have combined a device which allows the substitution of glass for films.”

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The series of shots constituting the whole of the view to be taken or projected, is divided into several plates, of equal dimensions and which can be substituted for each other. A continuous rotational movement, imparted to the mechanism of the device combined for this purpose, successively extracts the plates from a magazine where they are arranged.

The objective is passed in front of a lens by determining the stops necessary for the installation of each of the shots that a plate can contain and finally leads them gradually into a receiving magazine from where they will be removed once the operation is finished. The figures which accompany this description Trutat states, “will make it easy to understand the method of construction of the apparatus and its operation.” 

As a skilled craftsman, Martin contributed expertise in designing and manufacturing the physical components of photographic equipment, such as camera bodies or accessories, leveraging his background in cabinetmaking to ensure precision and quality. Dom was a French telegrapher from Toulon, born in 1860. He married Martin’s daughter in 1889, and in the following year, he co-founded the Dom-Martin factory. Dom is notable for his inventive contributions, particularly in cinematography. In 1889 the Dom-Martin factory producing photographic equipment and supplies began in Paris. Their first camera was an automatic snapshooter in 13 by 18 format.

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Dom and Martin also made a cine camera, the Cinéma-Dom which is our focus here. But it appears that Auguste Charles Dom’s attempt to patent a cinematograph which he filed in January 1897, was not very successful.

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In 1897, Auguste Charles Dom patented a cinematograph, a device combining camera, film printer, and projector functions, though it was not commercially successful. This aligns with the era’s rapid advancements in moving images, competing with innovations like the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe (1895). Rather than propelled by a firm mechanism that was controlled by the crank, the Cinéma-Dom film was moved by an intermittent spring escapement causing a very lively exchange without requiring any traction on the film itself. The result was likely a brain-numbing flicker.

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The Cinéma-Dom was designed to function as a combination of a camera, film printer, and projector, typical of early cinematographs. It utilized an intermittent escapement mechanism driven by a spring motor, which allowed for rapid and smooth substitution of images without direct traction on the film strip, reducing wear and tear. This mechanism was inspired by earlier devices like those of Étienne-Jules Marey and Norman Joly, and it included a constant loop of film before the projection window to ensure stability.

Below are pages 96 and 97 from Eugène Trutat’s La Photographie Animée published in 1899 identifying the Cinéma-Dom.

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The Cinéma-Dom’s design allowed for quick image transitions, potentially enabling projection without a shutter if the hand crank was turned slowly, though this was not its primary mode of operation. The spring-driven mechanism provided a more consistent film advance compared to direct hand-cranked systems, a notable innovation for the time. The Cinéma-Dom cinematograph did not achieve significant commercial success, likely due to competition from more prominent devices like the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe (introduced in 1895) and other established manufacturers such as Pathé or Gaumont. Eugène Trutat’s, La Photographie Animée published in 1899 pp96 and 97 translated.

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Here are the Cinema-Dom cinematograph patent pages of 1897 along with the schematic which I have turned horizontal from it’s original vertical alignment.

In August 1902, Dom Martin was sold to Maurice Languellier.

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TOP
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Welcome	About	Introduction	Chapter One beginning of time – 999 AD
Chapter Two 1000 AD – 1399	Chapter Three 1400 – 1599	Chapter Four 1600 – 1649	Chapter Five 1650 – 1699
Chapter Six 1700 – 1749	Chapter Seven 1750 – 1799	Chapter Eight 1800 – 1819	Chapter Nine 1820 – 1829
Chapter Ten 1830 – 1839	Chapter Eleven 1840 – 1849	Chapter Twelve 1850 – 1859	Chapter Thirteen 1860 – 1869
Chapter Fourteen 1870 – 1879	Chapter Fifteen 1880 – 1884	Chapter Sixteen 1885 – 1889	Chapter Seventeen 1890 – 1894
Chapter Eighteen 1895 – 1899	Chapter Nineteen 1900 + post cinema	Chapter Twenty 1911 +	Copyright
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