Major Innovators of Early Motion Pictures

The first machine patented in the United States that showed animated pictures or movies was a device called the wheel of life or zoopraxiscope. Patented in 1867 by William Lincoln, it allowed moving drawings or photographs to be viewed through a slit in the zoopraxiscope. However, this was a far cry from motion pictures as we know them today. The Lumià ¨re Brothers and the Birth of Motion Pictures Modern motion picture making began with the invention of the motion picture camera.  French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumià ¨re are often credited with inventing the first motion picture camera, although others had developed similar inventions at around the same time. What the Lumià ¨res invented was special, however. It combined a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit, and a projector called the Cinematographe. It was  basically a device with three functions in one. The Cinematographe made motion pictures very popular. It can even be said that Lumieres invention gave birth to  the motion picture era.  In 1895, Lumiere and his brother became the first to demonstrate photographic moving pictures projected onto a screen for a paying audience of more than one person. The audience saw ten 50-second films, including the Lumià ¨re brother’s first, Sortie des Usines Lumià ¨re à   Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumià ¨re Factory in Lyon). However, the Lumiere brothers were not the first to project film. In 1891, the Edison company successfully demonstrated the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. Later in 1896, Edison showed his improved  Vitascope  projector, the first commercially successful projector in the U.S. Here are some of the other key players  and milestones  in the history of motion pictures: Eadweard Muybridge San Francisco photographer Eadweard Muybridge conducted motion-sequence still photographic experiments and is referred to  as the  Father of the Motion Picture, even though he did not make films in the manner in which we know them  today. Thomas Edisons Contributions Thomas Edisons interest in motion pictures began prior to 1888.  However, the visit of Eadweard Muybridge to the inventors laboratory in West Orange in February of that year certainly stimulated Edisons resolve to invent a motion picture camera. Whereas film equipment has undergone drastic changes throughout the course of history, 35mm film has remained the universally accepted film size. We owe the format to a great extent to Edison. In fact, 35mm film was once called the Edison size. George Eastman In 1889, the first commercial transparent roll film, perfected by Eastman and his research chemist, was put on the market. The availability of this flexible film made possible the development of Thomas Edisons motion picture camera in 1891. Colorization Film Colorization was invented by Canadians Wilson Markle and Brian Hunt in 1983.   Walt Disney Mickey Mouses official birthday is November 18, 1928. Thats when he made his first film debut in  Steamboat Willie. While this was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon released, the first Mickey Mouse Cartoon ever made was  Plane Crazy  in 1928 and became the third cartoon released.  Walt Disney  invented Mickey Mouse and the multi-plane camera. Richard M. Hollingshead Richard M. Hollingshead patented and opened the first drive-in theater. Park-In Theaters  opened on June 6, 1933, in Camden, New Jersey. While drive-in showings of movies took place years earlier, Hollingshead was the first to patent the concept.  Ã‚  Ã‚   The IMAX Movie System The IMAX system has its roots in EXPO 67 in Montreal, Canada, where multi-screen films were the hit of the fair. A small group of Canadian filmmakers and entrepreneurs (Graeme Ferguson, Roman Kroitor, and Robert Kerr) who had made some of those popular films decided to design a new system using a single, powerful projector rather than the cumbersome multiple projectors used at that time. To project images of far greater size and with better resolution, the  film is run horizontally so that the image width is greater than the width of the film.