A D V E N T U R E S   in   C Y B E R S O U N D

Birt Acres was born in Richmond, Virginia, USA, on July 23, 1854. He was orphaned at 14 during the American Civil War and taken in by an Aunt. In or around 1872 she sent him to Paris to compete his education at the Sorbonne. There he studied Fine Arts (and presumably photography).

Acres returned to the USA in or around 1876 to lead the life, somewhat uncharacteristically, of a Frontiersman. During this time he became quite wealthy and in or around 1885 moved to England where he married a girl from Tasmania, Australia. He started a successful photographic business around this time and in the mid 1880s came into contact with Robert W. Paul.

Some of the next 25 years is documented below. Acres retired from active particpation in producing motion pictures in or around 1910 to concentrate on the supply of high quality cameras and film stock to the trade. He died in England in 1918.

The above information resulted from conversations with Alan Acres one of Birt's grandsons. The author met Alan in March 1998 when he was out from the UK visiting his own son Kevin and family, now living in Australia. A tentative agreement was made to provide more information ( lost for so many years ) to initially post here, but possibly be the basis for a website or book dedicated to Birt Acres' life and inventions.

Alan was also able to visit the house in Tasmania owned by his soon to be grandmother before moving to Britain.

Audience Exhibition and Industry
Birt Acres: British Film Pioneer working in Germany

Hauke Lange-Fuchs : Festival Director, Nordische Filmtage, Lubeck, Filmbewertungsstelle, Wiesbaden, Germany

Abstract

Birt Acres (1854-1918) who invented the first working English camera-cum-projector early in 1895, made films in Germany beginning in June 1895. His films (and Skladanowsky's) were the first to be made in Germany.

Acres had started working on 'living pictures' financed by scientific instrument maker Robert W. Paul in 1894/95. This partnership split after a short time. In May 1895, Acres had secretly taken out a sole patent for their co-developed Kineopticon camera. This was, we may assume, the result of some kind of industrial espionage in which Paul and Acres' assistant, Henry Short, were involved.

Frames from the first successful motion picture film made in Britain. 'Incident at Clovelly Cottage' The film was shot in March 1895 in front of Acres' home in Park Road, Barnet for the Kinetoscope machines manufactured by his then partner, Robert W. Paul.

Stollwerck, being interested in all kinds of automata ( chocolate automata as well as music automata ), tried at that time to introduce Edison's Kinetoscopes in Germany. He was in need of films for his kinetoscopes, and had established a contact with Acres via his London-based agent.

Acres was the first to film the Kaiser in June 1895 in Kiel, in Hamburg, and later - in August or September 1895 - in Berlin. A camera similar to his was patented in Germany by a 'Paul Måller' * (i.e. John Smith) in August 1895. An assumed name, out of regard for Robert Paul, Acres (who once called himself 'Paul Acres' while staying on vacation in Brighton) claimed this patent later for his camera. In fact, this patent was taken over by the Stollwerck company in December 1895.

But the first results of Acres' camera were not satisfying for Stollwerck (there was 'too much flickering'). In March 1896 he (Stollwerck?) signed a contract with the Lumière brothers, and introduced the Lumière system to Germany from April 1896.

Acres released his films in Germany some months later via a Berlin-based film seller Romain Talbot, (January 1897), but still kept contact with Ludwig Stollwerck during the following years. He frequently travelled to Germany and made, for example, advertising films for the Stollwerck company in the first decade of the twentieth century.

* Paul Måller in Henry Hopwood's, Living Pictures, 1899

also...

In Deac Rossell's, Living Pictures, 1998 Muller is named as an agent of the Stollwerck company and not Acres himself masquerading under a false name.

Source: http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/nmpft/film100/panel5c.htm

One of the pioneers of the cinema, Birt Acres, (b. Richmond, Virginia, USA, July 23, 1854, d. 1918 England), was responsible for the first British film (a record of the traditional Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race on 30 March 1895) using the Kineopticon, a camera he developed with scientific instrument maker Robert W. Paul.

The collaboration started when Paul approached Acres (an established professional photographer) with a view to pooling their talents as inventors to invent a British machine that would be compatible with Edison's Kinetoscope. They produced several saleable films in 1895, but the partnership broke up acrimoniously over disagreements on who invented the equipment. Acres produced few films after this period, though he maintained his reputation as a manufacturer of cameras and film stock.

Source: Michael Brooke, Internet Movie Database

Pioneers of Early Cinema: 6

Birt Acres (1852-1918)

Born in Richmond, Virginia, of British parents who died in the American Civil War (1861-65), Birt Acres spent the first part of his life in America and France, where he was sent by his guardian to study. In his twenties, Acres resettled in Britain, where he set up a studio 'for the production of portraits by painting and photography' in the Devon seaside resort of Ilfracombe. He established a reputation as a successful photographer, lecturer and contributor to photographic journals. He also worked as an inventor, patenting an apparatus for washing prints and a copying stereoscopic photographs.

In 1893, Acres joined Elliot and Son, the leading manufacturer of photographic plates and printing papers, as a manager and in the same year patented an apparatus for 'exposing successive photographic plates and for exhibiting magic lantern and other slides.' Towards the end of 1894, he was introduced by his friend Henry W Short to the electrical engineer, Robert W Paul. Paul was manufacturing copies of the Edison Kinetoscopes and was anxious to construct a camera to make films that could be shown on the machines as Edison supplied films only to operators of his Kinetoscopes.

The truth of who did what in the design of the camera which resulted from the Paul/Acres collaboration was disputed for years by the two men. Certainly, Paul constructed the camera in his Hatton Garden workshop and Acres operated it, taking the first successful film made in Britain, Incident at Clovelly Cottage outside his home in Barnet, North London in March 1895.

Paul and Acres entered into a ten year business agreement in March 1895; it lasted just six weeks as the two fell out, possibly because Acres patented his Kinetic Camera which was similar to the one the partners had developed together. During the short period of their partnership, Acres shot films of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in April and the Derby in May.

Following his rift with Paul, Acres went to Germany with his own camera, where he filmed the opening of the Kiel Canal and made the first film of the Kaiser in June 1895. His expedition was financed by a chocolate manufacturer, Ludwig Stollwerk, who wanted films for the Kinetoscopes that he was hoping to introduce into Germany.

On returning to Britain, Acres worked on making his own projector, variously known as the Kinetic Lantern, the Kineopticon and the Cinematoscope. The first public performance with the projector is recorded as taking place at the Royal Photographic Society (of which Acres was a Fellow) in London on 14 January 1896 - some five weeks before the first screening of the Lumière Cinématographe at the Polytechnic Institution. There is evidence that Acres gave a public show even earlier, on 10 January, to a photographic society In Barnet, North London, where he lived.

Over the next year or two he toured the country giving lectures with his Kineopticon at photographic societies. In June 1896, he was asked to give a programme of his films at the first Royal Command Film Performance at Malborough House, the residence of the Prince of Wales.

In January 1896, Acres formed his own company, The Northern Photographic Works, which specialised in coating, perforating and processing film. Film manufacture and processing became the mainstay of Acre's activities and proved to be successful as the British film industry began to be established. But Acres still worked as an inventor and in 1898 unveiled the Birtac, an apparatus that he hoped would popularise cinematography in the same way that the Kodak camera had made photography accessible to the amateur.

The Birtac was the first 'substandard' (ie. it used film narrower than the 35mm standard width) gauge cine camera and projector. Unfortunately, within weeks of the Birtac's launch, another 17.5mm camera/projector, the Biokam, was announced by the Warwick Trading Company. Half the price of the Birtac, and backed by one of the most important film companies, the Biokam had greater success. However, Birt Acres can claim the credit of inventing the first amateur ciné camera.

Unlike Paul, who achieved great success with his films but eventually returned to electrical engineering, Acres remained in the film business until his death even though he twice went bankrupt.

Further reading

John Barnes, The Beginnings of the Cinema in England (David and Charles, UK, 1976)

John Barnes, The Rise of the Cinema in Great Britain (Bishopsgate Press, UK, 1983)

John Barnes, Pioneers of the British Film (Bishopsgate Press, UK, 1983)

John Barnes, Filming the Boer War (Bishopsgate Press, UK, 1992)

Rachael Low and Roger Manvell, The History of the British Film: 1896 -1906 (Allen and Unwin, UK, 1973)

Herbert Tümmel, Birt Acres: An Almost Forgotten English Pioneer of Cinematography (Cinema Studies, Vol 1, No 7, January 1963)

Source: Michael Harvey, NMPFT

The Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, produced what is arguably the first real cinema show with the presentation of their Lumiere Cinematographe to a paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Paris on 28th December 1895.

In the meanwhile, Robert W. Paul, a London engineer, had seen the Kinetoscope parlour in Oxford Street and discovered that the machine had not been patented in England. He set about making copies, only to be frustrated when he tried to buy films which the suppliers would only sell to purchasers of the original machines. However, he soon met up with Birt Acres, a photographer, and together they produced a camera virtually identical to Marey's chronophotographic film camera.

On 30th March 1895, Acres filmed the Oxford and Cambridge boat race, and on 29th May the same year he filmed the Derby. On 27th May, Acres patented the Kinetic camera - based on the Paul-Acres machine, and this was probably the cause of the split between the two men which arose shortly after Acres had returned from Germany where he had filmed the June opening of the Kiel canal.

The films were only viewed as a 'peep-show' until Acres projected them, to the Royal Photographic Society on 14th January 1896 ¹, and later with his Kineopticon at Piccadilly Circus on 21st March 1896, about a month after the Lumiere's first London show.

Source: http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~robodyne/inventors-world/cinema5.htm

"Mr Birt Acres gave a demonstration of an apparatus which he called the Kinetic Lantern. The object of this was to throw a number of pictures upon the screen in such rapid succession as to reproduce the motion of life. The photographs for use in the lantern were taken in a somewhat similar apparatus also devised by Mr. Acres - at the rate of about 40 a second, although he could if necessary take as many as a hundred in a second, but the effect of motion was satisfactorily reproduced by projecting them on the screen at the rate of about fifteen per seciond. The subjects shown included men boxing, a review of the German Emperor, Epsom Downs, and the Derby race, serpentine dancing, and the sea breaking against an embankment.

A vote of thanks was passed to Mr. Birt Acres."

Animated photography really had its origin in the old zoetrope, in which a series of drawings were made upon a band of paper, each representing a phase of some animated scene, which was then put into a revolving drum with slits in it to enable you to see each picture as it came round, the result being a very fair representation for animation. The first serious attempt, that I can trace, of showing animated photographs was made by Professor Muybridge, and I believe they were shown at a Photographic Convention of 1889; but from what I can gather (I was not able to see them) I do not think they were purely photographs, but I believe they were drawings made from photographs with the special idea of illustrating the movements of a horse, etc. In Professor Muybridge's work a series of cameras, and, therefore, a series of lenses, was employed, and that introduces a very serious defect to which I will refer presently. The next name, and a name which I think must always be remembered in connection with this subject, is that of Mr Friese Green, who, I believe, made the first serious attempt at taking a series of photographs on one continuous band; I think he took out his patent in 1893. The next work that I know of is that of Anschutz. You may remember that about eight years ago Anschutz brought out a an improved form of the zoetrope, or wheel of life, in the shape of a machine about two feet across, and a series of reproductions of photographs of a horse jumping, or similar subjects, the exhibition lasting about a second. Then Marey, in France, made a machine about two feet across, and a series of pictures; he used one band of sensitive material, on the same principle as Friese Green, but he did not get the pictures properly spaced; the films were drawn off a drum, and the slack was taken up much in the same way as in the apparatus which I am going to bring before you, but without the very important addition of a guide. M. Demeny also made an apparatus in 1895 which had the same defect; he took a series of pictures, but it was necessary to cut them up and fix them on glass, or something of the kind, in order to get them correctly spaced. The Edison Kinetoscope, of course, you have all seen ; and then - without referring to the show I gave here in January, 1896 - the Lumiere apparatus was introduced, with which very successful exhibitions were given. The latest, and perhaps the biggest achievement, is that of the Biograph and Mutoscope Syndicate, and its success affords a very good proof that there is something in photography, and particularly in animated photography; indeed, I think there can be no doubt that animated photography is destined to revolutionise our art-science, both as regards matters historical and scientific, in addition to giving us lifelike portraits.

In the apparatus of Muybridge and Anchutz, as I before state, a series of lenses was used for taking the pictures, consequently the scenes depicted by this class of apparatus were limited to one plane, otherwise parallax asserted itself in the most confusing manner, causing near objects to rapidly alter their relative position in regard to distant objects. A simple illustration of this is obtained if the eyes are alternately closed when viewing objects on different planes; for example, if the finger is held up say a foot in front of the eyes and a distant object observed, the finger would appear alternately to the left and right of such distant object, and as the change of pictures is necessarily very rapid to ensure continuity of vision, when animated photographs are shown the confusion before referred to is very pronounced, hence these early efforts were confined to representations of near objects only, the background being quite plain.

In Friese Green's early apparatus he had not a perfect system of spacing the pictures, and, as far as I remember, the films were not perforated, and he depended upon clamping the film and drawing forward a certain quantity for each view. When you remember the enormous magnification which the pictures undergo, you can readily understand that is a rather difficult thing to get exact registration by that means. The apparatus of Marey and Demeny does not call for further notice, and you are familiar with the Edison Kinetoscope, but I may say a word of two about my own instrument, the "Birtac," and the way in which I have worked. I made a "claw" movement early in the nineties, but abandoned it in favour of the sprocket wheel, the teeth of which engage in perforations along the edge of the film, the latter being also supported by the drum of the wheel, by which means the risk of damaging the film is reduced to a minimum. As the film is wound off from one spool it is rewound upon another, so that there is no inconvenience or risk from having twenty feet of loose film twisting about. If there are no perforations, or if the claw movement is used, it is rather difficult to feed the film forward, particularly if it is of any length; in the system I invented, however, the film is fed forward at a definite rate, it is pulled forward by the sprocket wheel, and as the film is firmly held by the sprocket wheel there is no risk of the slip belt or other device which actuates the take-up spool pulling more film than is actually fed out, whereas in some of the claw movement machines, the mechanism for actuating the take-up spool has to be very delicately adjusted, otherwise there is risk of the film being pulled beyond its position in relation to the claws, in which case they would cease to engage in the holes and the pictures would be thrown out of register. Another objection I have to the claw machine, is that as the claws only engage one hole at a time there is more risk of the film being damaged.

The Biograph uses films without perforations, each picture measuring 2 3/4 inches by 2 inches; the additional weight of film and the fact that there are no perforations, introduces a number of difficulties which the inventors have overcome successfully.

Celluloid - the material that, unfortunately, we are obliged to use, because there is no other suitable - celluloid and gelatine, when they come together, do not always remain of the same length; a piece of sensitised celluloid which is 100 feet long to-day, may be an inch or two longer to-morrow, and as much shorter the day after. Now, if you have no perforations to ensure continual adjustment you must allow in some way for this variation, and in any machine that uses films without perforations it is therefore necessary to have an adjusting arrangement to shorten or lengthen the amount of film drawn forward at each stroke. One of the difficulties which have stood in the way of the adoption of animated photography, by amateurs and professionals alike, arise in the development of the negative films, but I have overcome this difficulty and rendered the operations of development, fixing, and washing of the greatest simplicity. The films are wound upon a wooden frame furnished with wooden pegs between which the film passes, and it is then quite easily developed, fixed and washed in tanks resembling the old-fashioned wet-plate dipping bath, so that the film need not be handled at all.

Another drawback is the cost of film, but by using films of half the linear measurement as in the "Birtac" the area is reduced to one quarter, and the cost proportionally reduced.

It will be noticed that the perforations in the films used by me for the "Birtac" are not round, but cushion shaped, rectangular with circular corners, a shape which provides a large flat surface on which the sprockets may engage, thus greatly reducing the risk of tearing. This is the standard perforation, the film being simply split down the centre, so that films for this machine are obtainable anywhere. It occurred to me that by placing the perforations between the pictures I should certainly be able to get larger pictures with the same width of film, as by perforating at the side the margin of the film must be sacrificed; on the other hand, if they were placed between the views something must be sacrificed; on the other hand, if they were placed between the movement as the sprocket wheel will not work satisfactorily if the holes are a considerable distance apart, as in that case they would have to be. The continuous contact of the clawing arrangement with the film, too, has a tendency to split off little bits of the gelatine at the perforations, which are the weakest parts of the film, and one cannot afford to do this in the middle of a picture, but when the holes are in the margin, this is of no consequence.

The "Birtac" is designed for home use, and is so constructed as to be available both for taking and showing the photographs with the single alteration of removing the lens form one place and fixing it in another. The illuminant for projection is the incandescent gas-light, but as the pressure of house gas is not always sufficient for the purpose, I have devised a simple apparatus by which the gas is pumped into a bellows and then fed to the burner, the pressure being thus very considerably increased. the mantles are rather liable to injury, but I am informed that strong mantles, that will stand almost any amount of pressure, will shortly be placed on the market.

Mr Birt Acres, at the conclusion of his remarks, exhibited and described his apparatus, the "Birtac," and afterwards exhibited a number of animated photographs by means of the same instrument, his method of increasing the pressure of the gas causing a marked improvement in the power of the light. A few questions were subsequently asked, to which Mr Acres briefly replied. He recapitulated the advantages of perforating the margin of the film, as compared with the alternative method of having the perforations between the pictures. He had been unable to find a better developer for the negatives when pyro-soda, metol being recommended for developing the positive transparencies. With the increased pressure of gas he could satisfactorily illuminate a 5 feet disc; the films were 20 feet in length, contained 640 pictures each ´ inch by 3/8 inch in size, and occupied about a minute n exhibition. He had carefully considered the possibility of using acetylene as the illuminant for projection, but having regard to the present condition of knowledge with regard to that gas he did not feel justified in recommending its adoption for this purpose."

A vote of thanks was passed to Mr. Birt Acres.

Source: © The Photographic Journal, March 30, 1899, pp.188-191

The new * cinema and lecture theatre in JOMEC's home, the Bute Building, is named after the film pioneer Birt Acres (1854-1918) who, on 6 May 1896 in Cathays Park adjacent to the Bute Building, demonstrated the 'Lumiere Cinematographe' to a public audience at a festival of Science and Arts. This was the first time the cinema had been seen in Wales and was within weeks of similar demonstrations in London and some five months after the first screening in Paris, which marks the birth of the cinema.

Birt Acres, a Londoner born in the USA, invented the first working English camera-projector in 1895. Together with his collaborator Robert W. Paul, he shot - in the same year - the world's first film of a news event, the Oxford and Cambridge boat race. The film he showed in Cardiff (long vanished) was 80ft long and lasted just over a minute. It showed the Prince of Wales scratching his head. This was considered a breach of protocol and, for his pains, Acres was derided by the Globe newspaper as "a photograph fiend". His oldest surviving film lasts 50 seconds and shows the 1895 Derby horse race.

The first film of Welsh street scenes was made by Paul in Queen Street Cardiff in October 1896.

* file dated January 4, 1998

Source: http://www.cf.ac.uk/uwcc/jomec/birtacrs.html

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