A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DAntoine Lumière : 1840 - 1911 and his sons...Auguste Marie Louis Nicholas Lumière : 1862 - 1954 and Louis Jean Lumière :1864 - 1948
Also: Auguste 1864 - 1948 and Louis 1862 - 1954 (Leggat) and 1867 - 1948 (~chtrain/Lumiere.html) 'Brittanica' and 'film100.com' say: Auguste b. Oct. 19, 1862, Besançon, France d. April 10, 1954, Lyon; Louis b. Oct. 5, 1864, Besançon d. June 6, 1948, Bandol, France
The Les Frères Lumière, Louis (b. 1862; d. 1954) and Auguste (b. 1864; d. 1948) made a distinctive contribution to photography in various areas. They are perhaps best known for having produced a Cinematograph camera in 1895, using a claw movement which advanced the film, a principle which still applies in motion photography today. They also produced the Autochrome plate in 1907, the first practical colour photography process. Louis Lumiere received the Progress Medal of the Royal Photographic Society in 1909.
1895, February 13, Auguste (1862-1954) and Louis Lumière (1864-1948) invent a camera and projector system, later patented and known as the Cinématographe. Their first public showing, to an audience of invited specialists, is on 22nd March, at 44 rue des Rennes in Paris. The film they shoot specially for the occasion shows workers leaving the Lumières' own factory in Lyon, which made all kinds of photographic products. Several more such screenings follow before the first public performance, at the Salon Indien of the Grand Café, 14 Boulevard des Capucines in Paris on 28th December. The Lumières soon begin opening cinemas. In the first four months of 1896 alone, cinematograph theatres open in London, Brussels, Berlin and New York. The cinematograph is also shown to many of the crowned heads of Europe. By 1897, the Lumières have a catalogue listing 358 different film strips; by 1898, the number has increased to 1,000; by 1901, to 1,299 titles.
Auguste Lumière (b. Oct. 19, 1862 in Besancon, France, d. April 10, 1954 in Lyon, France). Louis Lumière (b Oct. 5,1864 in Besancon France d, June 6, 1948 in Bandol France). In 1894, Louis Lumière was 18 and just completing a factory for the production of photographic plates. He had over 300 workers making more than 15 million plates in his first year. The last thing on his mind was a new venture. But his father, [Antoine] a famous painter, returned from a showing of Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris and charged his sons Louis and Auguste to combine animated pictures with a projection device. They started by examining Edison's process. In recording his films, Edison built a monstrous studio with a heavy, stationary camera. Everything filmed by Edison's company had to fit into the studio and perform in front of the camera. Furthermore, the peephole projectors could be viewed by only one person at a time. The Lumières believed the two parts could be integrated. Their answer was the Cinematographe of 1895, a hand-cranked camera that reduced the frame speed of Edison's 48 to a mere 16, and needed less film. More importantly, the Cinematographe was housed in a single unit with a film projector for viewing by an entire group. And best of all, it was lightweight, so the Lumières could venture outside, to capture the real world. They made more than 60 recordings of everyday life in the next year. Although most were unimaginative, featuring names like THE ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN, or FEEDING THE BABY, they were outdoor scenes. And there were many firsts. The first film ever projected was WORKERS LEAVING THE LUMIÉRE FACTORY (1895). The first screen comedy was WATERING THE GARDENER. The first newsreel, the first documentary, and so on. The Lumières displayed these films at the first public screening in Paris on December 28, 1895 to curious photographers and inventors. By 1897, the Lumières were training camera operators for additional exhibition films and re-tooling their factory for the production and sale of film equipment. And soon they followed Edison in renting their film library of more than 750 titles to theater owners. The Lumière films never matched the pace or creativity of others like George Méliès. As distribution became competitive, the Lumières ceased production in 1900. But by that time, the Lumières had disseminated the essential equipment and inspiration.
Antoine Lumière was born into a modest family in Haute-Saône in 1840. After a training in Paris, he established himself in Besancon as a painter, then as portrait photographer. His destined to be famous sons Auguste and Louis were both born at Besancon (1862 and 1864) but it was in Lyon, where the family moved in 1870, that their collective fame and fortune rose. Antoine devoted the end of its life to painting and died in Paris on April 2, 1911.
Born in the Haute-Saône district in 1840, Antoine Lumière was a man of character, a non-conformist with an artistic flair as demonstrated by his attraction for painting and singing and especially the way in which he encouraged and, later, in 1894, took charge of his sons' invention. Married at the age of 19, Antoine established himself in Besançon as a painter then a photographer. His first two sons were born there; Auguste in 1862 and Louis in 1864. In 1870, the Lumière family fled eastern France under the menace of the Prussian army and settled in Lyon. A born businessman, Antoine opened a photo studio in the center of town. He kept a close watch on the latest inventions in the field of moving pictures and followed his sons' education with equal attention. Louis and Auguste attended La Martinière, the biggest technical high school in Lyon. The youngest son, Louis, developed a dry-plate photo process, known as Etiquette bleue, which brought fame and financial success to the family business. To manufacture and commercialize the plates, Antoine Lumière bought a large tract of land in the Monplaisir quarter in the Lyon suburbs. Fortune came quickly. In the autumn of 1894, Antoine Lumière asked his sons to work on the problem of animated images which had so far stumped such great inventors as Edison and others. This paternal push in the right direction resulted in the invention of the "Lumière Cinematograph" which Lyon, France and the world celebrated on its one hundredth birthday in 1995.
Les Frères Lumière Reynaud avait inventé le "dessin animé", Marey la Chronophotographie, Edison le Kinetoscope. Les uns et les autres participaient sans le savoir à la naissance du cinématographe. Mais c'est à Louis (1867-1948) et Auguste (1862-1954) Lumière, fils du photographe Antoine Lumière et eux-mêmes directeurs d'une usine de fabrication de plaques photographiques, qu'en revient le mérite incontesté. Ils parvinrent en fait à effectuer, en un seul appareil, la synthèse de toutes les recherches antérieures. Un premier brevet fut pris, le 13 février 1895, pour cet "appareil servant à l'obtention et à la vision des épreuves chronophotographiques", inventé selon la légende en une nuit (fin 1894). Il ne s'agissait encore que d'un "Kinetoscope de projection". Transformations et améliorations suivront qui aboutiront au Cinématographe, que l'ingénieur Jules Carpentier, qui fabriquait des optiques réputées, fut chargé de construire en série. Louis Lumière tourna quelques bandes à titre d'essai, dont La Sortie des usines Lumière , projetée en privée dès mars 1895. Une seconde projection eut lieu à l'occasion du congrès des Sociétés françaises de photographie, qui se tint à Lyon les 10 et 12 juin 1895. Il restait à lancer cette curiosité scientifique. Pour ce faire, un spectacle payant fut organisé à Paris, au Salon indien, dans les sous-sols du Grand Café, le 28 décembre 1895. Ce fut du délire. Devant le mur s'abattant sous la pioche des démolisseurs dans un nuage de poussière, devant les feuilles remuant au vent, "nous restâmes tous bouche bée, frappés de stupeur", devait dire Méliès. "C'est la nature prise sur le fait", titrait La Nature. Le rêve avait bel et bien pris forme. Le spectacle cinématographique était né.
Auguste and Louis Lumière (respectively b. Oct. 19, 1862, Besançon, Fr., d. April 10, 1954, Lyon; b. Oct. 5, 1864, Besançon, d. June 6, 1948, Bandol), French inventors and pioneer manufacturers of photographic equipment who devised an early motion-picture camera and projector called the Cinématographe ("cinema" is derived from this name). Their film La Sortie des ouvriers de l'usine Lumière (1895); "Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory", shown in Paris, is considered the first motion picture. Sons of a painter turned photographer, the two boys displayed brilliance in science at school in Lyon, where their father had settled. Louis worked on the problem of commercially satisfactory development of film; at 18 he had succeeded so well that with his father's financial aid he opened a factory for producing photographic plates, which gained immediate success. By 1894 the Lumières were producing some 15,000,000 plates a year. That year the father, Antoine, was invited to a showing of Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris; his description of the peephole machine on his return to Lyon set Louis and Auguste to work on the problem of combining animation with projection. Louis found the solution, which was patented in 1895. At that time they attached less importance to this invention than to improvements they had made simultaneously in colour photography. But on Dec. 28, 1895, a showing at the Grand Café on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris brought wide public acclaim and the beginning of cinema history. The Lumière apparatus consisted of a single camera used for both photographing and projecting at 16 frames per second. Their first films (they made more than 40 during 1896) recorded everyday French life, e.g., the arrival of a train, a game of cards, a toiling blacksmith, the feeding of a baby, soldiers marching, the activity of a city street. Others were early comedy shorts. The Lumières presented the first newsreel, a film of the French Photographic Society Conference, and the first documentaries, four films about the Lyon fire department. Beginning in 1896 they sent a trained crew of innovative cameraman-projectionists to cities throughout the world to show films and shoot new material. also... After (Dickson and Edison's) Kinetoscope was introduced in Paris, Auguste and Louis Lumière produced a combination camera/projector, first demonstrated publicly in 1895 and called the cinématographe. The device used a triangular "eccentric" (intermittent) movement connected to a claw to engage the sprocket holes. As the film was stationary in the aperture for two-thirds of each cycle, the speed of 16 frames per second allowed an exposure of 1/25 second. At this slower rate audiences could actually see the shutter blade crossing the screen, producing a "flicker" that had been absent from Edison's pictures. On the other hand, the hand-cranked cinématographe weighed less than 20 pounds (Edison's camera weighed 10 times as much). The Lumière units could therefore travel the world to shoot and screen their footage.
The two flowing rivers of the birth of film are considered to be Thomas Edison and Louis and Auguste Lumière. Edison was the Grand Showman, recording music hall turns inside his barnlike studio with a monstrous, cumbersome camera. The Lumières were Grand Documentarians, taking to the Parisian streets with their cinématographe and photographing everyday occurences, displaying a joy in movement and commonplace realities, celebrating the mundane as a lifeforce. From the first, the Lumières were technicians. Their father, Antoine, was a well-known portrait painter who gave up paint for financial rewards in the business of photographic supplies. Antoine sent his sons to technical school, but because of recurring headaches, Louis left the school early and began experimenting with his father's photographic apparatus. In the process, he discovered a new process for the preparation of photographic plates and a factory was built to manufacture them. By 1895, the Lumière factory was the leading European manufacturer of photographic products, employing over 300 workers. Like Edison, the Lumières had become successful inventor-businessmen. An invitational demonstration of the Edison Kinetoscope, a parlor peephole machine, in Paris in 1894, sparked the Lumières' interest in motion pictures and the brothers set out to devise a machine that would combine motion picture movement with front projection. In 1895, Louis came up with such a device, and the cinématographe was patented in his name. With the cinématographe, the emphasis of the nascent motion picture form was dramatically changed. Edison's bulky, stationary camera forced its subjects to display themselves in front of the camera as objects of a performance. The cinématographe, on the other hand, was not bulky but lightweight (about five kilograms), hand-cranked and not bound to a studio. The Lumière camera reduced the frames-per-second (f.p.s.) speed from Edison's 48 to 16, using less film and reducing the clatter and grinding of the Edison camera. The cinématographe was also unique in that the same housing functioned as a camera, projector and printer. And, perhaps most importantly of all, the Lumières applied the principle of intermittent movement to film projection, allowing smooth-running projection through the film gate-an idea Edison had rejected as he struggled to perfect projection using continuous movement past the film gate. The Lumières' technical innovations allowed the motion pictures to venture into the world outside of a studio, permitting any object in reality to become a subject of interest for the camera. From their first film, LA SORTIE DES USINES/WORKERS LEAVING THE LUMIERE FACTORY (1895), the Lumières made everyday processes their subjects. In 1895, they recorded over 20 subjects, including L'ARRIVEE D'UN TRAIN EN GARE/ARRIVAL OF A TRAIN, LE REPAS DE BEBE/FEEDING THE BABY, L'ARROSEUR ARROSEE/WATERING THE GARDENER, DEMOLITION D'UN MUR/THE FALLING WALL and COURSE EN SACS/THE SACK RACE. At first, the Lumières kept their invention a secret, only demonstrating the cinématographe at private screenings, first at a March 22, 1895, industrial meeting in Paris and later at a June 10 meeting of photographers at Lyon. These private exhibitions were met with great enthusiasm, and, on December 28, 1895, the Lumières held their first public screening at the Grand Café on the Boulevard des Capucines. The reaction was sensational and before long there were 20 showings a day to meet the tremendous public demand. The success spurred the Lumières to debut the cinématographe in England, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. By 1897, the Lumières were a global success, training hundreds of operators and expanding their film catalog to over 750 titles. But after the Paris Exposition of 1900, during which they projected a film on a mammoth 99 x 79-foot screen, the brothers decided to curtail their film exhibitions and devote themselves to the manufacture and sale of their inventions. As inventors and businessmen, the Lumières were perhaps uneasy shooting film subjects in an area that had begun to attract burgeoning film artists. While Edison stubbornly struggled to hold back the clock, forming a trust to quash up-and-coming filmmakers, the Lumières' withdrawal from the vanguard of filmmaking opened the door for others to advance the aesthetic side of film. Nevertheless, during their brief careers in production, the Lumières brought filmmaking to five continents, demonstrated the beauty of movement in the mundane, and forever enshrined "cinema" as the art form of the 20th century.
Louis Lumière Although no-one will ever come up with a definitive answer as to who "invented" the cinema (probably because no one single person was responsible), Louis Lumière has one of the strongest claims to the title - for it was he (with his brother Auguste) who invented the cinematographe: a machine that combined the functions of camera and projector and was thus able to project films onto a screen to an audience. The invention was patented on February 13 1895, and a programme of short films directed and photographed by Louis was first unveiled to the general public on 28 December 1895 - a date that many historians claim to be the birthdate of the cinema as we know it. The cinematographe was an immediate hit, and its influence was colossal - within just two years, the Lumière catalogue included well over a thousand films, all of them single-shot efforts running under a minute, and many photographed by cameramen sent to various exotic locations. Although Lumière also staged some fictional scenes, the bulk of the work bearing his name would nowadays be described as documentary reportage. In common with many cinema pioneers, he perversely saw no future for the medium, and retired in 1900 to make still photographic equipment -the field in which he originally made his reputation. The films shown in that momentous programme on December 28, 1895 were as follows...
La Voltige, (1895) La Pêche aux poissons rouges, (1895) Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon, (1895) Les Forgerons, (1895) L' Arroseur arrosé, (1895) Repas de bébé (1895) Le Saut à la couverture, (1895) Place des Cordeliers à Lyon (1895) La Mer, (1895)
Although it is his brother Louis who is generally acclaimed as the "father of the cinema", Auguste Lumière also made a major contribution towards the development of the medium, firstly by helping with the invention and construction of the cinematographe (the world's first camera and projection mechanism), and secondly by appearing as a subject in many of the films shot by Louis (thus unwittingly becoming one of the first film 'stars'!). But according to Louis, Auguste lost interest in the cinematographe as soon as construction had been completed, and thereafter showed no further interest in the film medium
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