The Discovery of Motion Picture Photographing
Filmkultura
The Discovery of Motion Picture Photographing
The discovery of motion picture photographing was prompted by the perception of the physiological phenomenon that the retina of the human eye preserves the sight even after its disappearance, and perceives phases of motion as uninterrupted sequence.The notion that motion consists of phases and is but a change of condition has been known since Antiquity.
The first scientist to prove this experimentally was the Belgian physician Joseph Plateu in 1827. The instrument he called Fenaikisticope, (the term was coined from the Greek fenax,akos: delusive, and skopein: examine) consisted of a revolving disc, held in the hand by a handle, with openings cut on its rim and drawings depicting phases of motion on its other side. When the disc was rolled the drawings, as if in continuous motion, melted into a continuous whole in a mirror placed opposite the observer.
In 1839, when the discovery of photographing became widely known through Joseph Nicéphore Niépce's 1826 invention, modified and accounted for to the public by Jacques-Louis-Mandé Daguerre,- new horizons were opened up in the depiction of motion by photographing. From then on, mainly photographs were used for further experiments. The Austrian artillery officer, Franz von Uchatius, succeeded in projecting pictures drawn on a disc similar to the fenaitisticope in 1853, thereby demonstrating synthetic motion to an audience for the first time.
The imperfection of the photographing instrument and of the raw material, however, made it impossible to record satisfactorily short phases of motion. With the development of photo-optics and photo-chemistry, with the discovery of stereoscope cameras and brome-silver gelatine dry-discs by the Scotsman David Brewster in 1856 and the English Richard Leach Maddox in 1871 respectively, a new era of experiments opened up yet again.
An important milestone during the seven decades long process leading to the discovery of motion picture photography was the implementation of the disc-shaped rotating-lock, first used by the French astronomer Pierre-Jules-César Janssen in 1874. In his experiment he projected the different phases of Venus's continuous motion passing in front of the Sun onto a glass disc, with the lock opening or closing off the way of light through the objective in phased motion.
A fundamental principle of motion-picture photography and projection is that the picture must, for a fraction of the second, be motionless behind the objective during exposition and projection, to then pass by in phases. The human eye recognises and preserves the picture in that fraction of the second, with the film rolling on and the objective opening up again, and this impression or visual phenomenon vividly lives on in the human brain although no new impression is made on the retina between two pictures or two phases of motion.
The human eye, however, compensates for this by perceiving the motion to be in continuity and not in phases. This was discovered by the English Peter Mark Roget in 1824 and this physiological peculiarity soon became the starting-point for all future experiments. Eadweard Muybridge, an English photographer who settled in the United States in 1878, was asked by the millionaire Leland Stanford to prove that all the four hoofs of a galloping horse are in the air. Muybridge proved the assumption of his employer with 12, then 24, and finally with 30 stereoscope cameras, launching a wave of experiments about photographing humans and animals in motion.
Yet the English photographer never succeeded in adding up the phases of motion to a continuous sequence. Although by perfecting the zootrope, ( the term was coined from the Greek zoon: animal and tropos: rotate ), an instrument discovered by the American Horner, and the stroboscope, ( coined from the Greek strobos: rotate and scopein: to observe), which was discovered by the Austrian Simon Stampfer, he managed to create the zoopracsiscope for the depiction of motion (Zoon: animal, pracsis: motion, and scopein: to observe).
In this instrument he replaced drawings with snapshots made in hundreds of seconds which could be enjoyed on a glass-surface placed in the middle of the rotating disc, but in generating motion he was only partially successful. The news of Muybridge's experiments reached Paris as well as West Orange, New Jersey, in his chosen country, where the Edison company's research laboratory was to be found.
Although the French Etienne-Jules Marey was initially only partially successful, -taking 12 pictures a second with his photograph-gun perfected from Janssen's rotating lock,- with the implementation of the film-reel used from 1888 and the development of a mechanism to forward the film with between 1890-1892, he managed to produce real motion-pictures for the first time.
As the glass-plate carrying a light-sensitive layer used by him previously was fragile and difficult to handle, limiting the number of shots that could be taken with it, Marey's interest turned to the nitro-cellulose-based celluloid-band, commonly known as film-reels. Thanks to the English Parkes, it has been known since 1855 and produced for the first time by the American Hyatt-brothers in 1869.
It was the film-reel that eventually made it possible to make a theoretically unlimited number of pictures, thereby recording ever longer and more complicated processes of motion, as done by Marey.
That the film-reel, which moved between smooth rollers, could only be stopped or started again by the pressing down of these rollers made it difficult to forward the film and was the cause of unequal distance between pictures. This hardship was eliminated by perforation, or the sequence of holes placed on either side of the film-reel. Into these holes the cog-rollers could easily clutch, forwarding the film behind the objective or moving it away from it with gradual phases of motion. The American Blair Company provided Edison's laboratory with perforated films from 1888, until their film had been superseded by the universally used Eastman-Walker perforated film-reels.
Marey did not succeed in securing the continuous and phased moving of the film-reel or the equal distance between pictures. These problems were, independently of each other, solved by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, working for Edison's laboratory, and by Marey's colleague, the Hungarian George Demény almost at the same time.
Dickson, with his recording camera called Cinetograf, managed to make films for Edison in the modern sense as early as 1894 . Those interested could watch these films projected by a Cinetoscope, a watching box which was also his invention.
In October, 1893 Demény patented and in 1894 he manufactured the prototype of his recording camera, offering it to the Lumiere-brothers, but apart from Léon Gaumon nobody showed any interest in his invention.
On February 18th 1895, August and Louis Lumiere of Lyon patented a machine which revolutionised the efforts at motion-picture photography. Their Cinematograf ( from the Greek Cinema: motion and grafein: to write), for the first and also for the last time, was able to perform three actions: it made moving picture photographs, it projected them, and took prints from the negative.
The new machine was displayed for the public on March 22nd, 1895.
The general public was acquainted with the last important invention of the 19th century in the Indian Saloon in the basement of the Great Café of Paris on December 28th, 1895. The invention was to fundamentally change the outlook and time- and space-consciousness of 20th century man, making mankind's collective memory a heritage that could be handed down through generations.
The first important event in the history of Hungarian film and movie-theatre was the successful "living photograph" exhibition organised by Mr. Eugene Dupont, acting on behalf of the Lumiere brothers. The Lumiere brothers also filmed some of the events of the Millennium Parade on June 8th, 1896. There are, however, other successful enterprises which marked the beginnings yet became less known. On the Millennium Exposition a "cinetoscope pavilion "and Edison's cynematograph were to be seen, in the Somossy Variety Show an "animatograph" performed its tricks, and the Sziklai brothers, - Arnold and Zsigmond ,- made attempts at recording and showing films.
As well as everywhere in the world, cafés became home first for moving pictures in Hungary, too. Initially only tentatively though, but shortly after the first Hungarian film-premiere in the capital, - where the bourgeois classes were gradually gaining a strong foothold,- "cinematography" was included into the program of cafés by side of occasional cabarets and literary and musical entertainment. Out of some of these cafés developed the moving theatres of the future, but the majority of the enterprises went bankrupt.
The first truly successful pioneers were Mor Ungerleider and his partner, József Neumann, owners of Café Mercur, later to be called Café Velence ( still later called Phoenix, then Tisza Movie Theatre). The much endowed head-waiter of the café, József Bécsi was to become one of the first Hungarian cameramen. Ungerleider and his partner established the first Hungarian commercial and moving-picture enterprise as early as 1898. From the 1900s, their Projectograph produced and sold primarily news and educational but even films of entertainment of 100 meters. The company also issued one of the first Hungarian film magazines, called Moving Photograph News.
Source: http://www.filmkultura.iif.hu:8080/articles/teaching/discovery.textonly.en.html
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