I. INVENTIONOFMOVIES

A. Franz Uchatius – 1853

1. Captain in the Austrian army

2. Taught a class in artillery

a) Wanted to show students how an artillery shell flew

(1) Put pictures on slides

(a) A cannon

(b) A shell flying

(c) Each slide had the shell flying a little farther

(2) Put the slides ona disk

(3) Mounted the disk in a magic lantern projector

(a) A light shone through a slide, through a lens, onto a screen

(b) Spun the disk

(i) Persistence of vision made the projection look like the cannon shell was flying through the air

b) Invented the first motion picture machine

B. Ludwig Doebler

1. One of Europe’s greatest magicians

2. Saw Euchatius’ motion picture machine

a) Bought the machine for a few florin

b) Started showing motion pictures all over Europe and America\

(1) A big hit

(2) Made Doebler a fortune

C. The magic lantern projector

1. The camera obscura (pin-hole camera)

a) Known by Aristotle and Leonardo de Vinci

b) How it works as described by Ibn Al-Haytham (Al Hazen) in 1021

(1) A closed box with a pin hole in one wall

(2) Light goes through the hole and shines on the opposite wall

(3) Reflected light of an object makes the object appear upside down

(4) You could trace the object and make a drawing of it

II. The photographic camera

A. Joseph Nicephore Niepce – 1827

1. Created the first camera

a) Coated a sheet of pewter with bitumen

b) Put the sheet in a camera obscura

c) Exposed the plate to the light coming through the pinhole

d) Washed the plate in naphtha to remove the excess bitumen

e) Left a photograph

2. Required an eight-hour exposure

B. Louis Daguerre – 1839

1. Improved Niepce’s process

2. Photographic plate

a) Highly polished silver or copper plate

b) Coated with silver iodide which is sensitive to light

3. Plate in a camera obscura with a lens to focus the image on the plate

a) Light etches the plate

b) Plate is washed in a solvent leaving the picture

4. Only creates a positive picture

a) No negatives

b) No copies

c) Takes 30 minutes to do the exposure

C. William Henry Fox Talbot – 1840

1. Improved Daguerre’s method

2. Used translucent paper instead of a metal plate

a) Could make negatives this way

b) Could make multiple positive copies

3. Made the coating more sensitive

a) exposure time down to seconds instead of minutes

III. The motion picture projector

A. Eadweard Muybridge

1. Saw Euchatius’ projector when it was brought to America by Doebler

2. Running horse bet in 1873

a) Leland Stanford bet a friend that a horse had all four feet off the ground at once

(1) No one could tell if true

(2) Stanford asked Muybridge to find a way

b) Muybridge’s method

(1) Line a course with a series of cameras

(2) Attach strings to the cameras shutters

(3) Run the strings across the course

(4) Have the horse run down the course

(a) Would hit the strings

(b) Strings would snap the camera shutters

(5) Created a series of still pictures

(6) Proved that all four feet were off the ground at once

3. Invented the zoopraxiscope

a) Essentially Euchatius’ machine

b) Used photographs instead of drawings

c) Began putting on motion picture shows

IV. Movie film

A. John Wesley Hyatt

1. Billiard ball makers needed an artificial ivory

2. Hyatt’s formula

a) Alcohol

b) Camphor

c) Gun cotton

d) Compressed the elements into billiard balls

3. Hyatt called his substance celluloid

a) Had a tendency to explode

b) Was made of gun cotton, after all

B. Hannibal Goodwin

1. Welsh clergyman

2. Turned Hyatt’s celluloid into sheets

3. Replaced the old paper backing

C. George Eastman

1. Took Goodwin’s sheets and turned them into strips he called film

V. Thomas Edison

A. Took Euchatius’ idea of passing pictures rapidly in front of a light and through a lens

1. Doebler brought the idea to America

2. Muybridge adopted the idea and told Edison about it

B. Took Hyatt’s celluloid, which was turned into sheets by Goodwin, and into strips as film by Eastman

C. Added his own bits

1. Light bulb instead of oil lamp as light source

2. Put sprocket holes along on side of the film

3. Made a machine that would pull the film past the light and shine the light through a lens

4. Marketed his kinetoscope starting in 1894

VI. The Movies

A. At first just scenes of daily life

1. Two men boxing

2. A girl dancing

3. A couple kissing

4. Only one person could watch a kinetoscope movie at a time

B. Louis and Auguste Lumiere – 1895

1. Invented the movie theatre

a) Made a projector like Euchatius’

(1) Used film instead of a spinning disk

b) Put a sheet up on one wall in the basement of a café

c) Showed films they made

(1) One film caused a panic

(a) A train arriving at a station

(b) Looked like the train was coming straight at the audience

(c) Audience believed the train was really there and ran screaming from the theatre

C. Real life scenes became boring as the novelty wore off

D. George Melies – 1902

1. A stage artist and magician

2. Created movies that told stories

a) Imaginative sets

b) Make-up

c) Costumes

d) Special effects

e) Editing

3. “A Voyage to the Moon”

a) Would have made a fortune for Melies

b) A man working for Edison stole a copy

(1) Edison distributed the movie as his own

(2) Made a fortune for Edison

(3) Melies didn’t get a dime (no copyright laws)

E. The nickelodeon

1. Lumieres’ idea for a movie theatre

2. Melies’ idea about movies telling stories

3. Charged a nickel

4. Name comes from the ticket price (nickel) and the Greek word for theatre (Odeon)

F. Edison (again)

1. Made a projecting kinetoscope

2. Made story-telling movies like “The Great Train Robbery”

G. Longer movies

1. One-reelers (about 10 minutes) began to pall

2. Producers began making 2- and 3- and more reelers

3. Famous example is D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” in 1915

VII. The invention of movie sound

A. Movies were silent, accompanied by a piano, organ, or even a orchestra

B. Edison (yet again)

1. Used a phonograph with his kinetograph

a) Again, only one customer to the movie

b) Heard the sound through a stethoscope-like tube

C. Phonograph played with a projected film

1. Problem with synchronization

2. Needed a way to link the sound to the picture

D. Sound recording

1. The telephone converted sound into electrical impulses

a) Altered the amplitude of the current

2. A light’s brilliance can be altered by the amount of current it receives

3. In 1853 Danish researchers discovered that selenium would transmit an electric current in direct relation to the amount of light hitting it – more light, more current

E. The process

1. Use a microphone to convert sound to electrical impulses

2. Send those impulses to a light

3. Shine that light on film just like photographing a scene, creating a sound track