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19th century in film
See also:
1900 in film,
list of 'years in film'.
- 1832 - Joseph Plateau[?] builds the Phenakisticope[?], a toy that creates an optical illusion of movement by mounting drawings on the face of a slotted, spinning disk.
- 1834 - The Zoetrope is invented. The device was a hollow drum with a strip of pictures around its inner surface. When the drum was spun, the pictures appeared to move.
- 1870s - French inventor Émile Reynaud[?] improved on the Zoetrope idea by placing mirrors at the center of the drum. Some time later, Reynaud developed a projecting version of the Zoetrope, using a reflector and a lens to enlarge the moving images.
- 1878 - Railroad tycoon Leland Stanford hired British photographer Eadweard Muybridge to settle a bet on whether a galloping horse ever had all four of its feet off the ground. Muybridge successfully photographed a horse in fast motion using a series of 12 cameras controlled by trip wires. Muybridge's photos showed the horse with all four feet off the ground. Muybridge went on a lecture tour showing his photographs on a moving-image device he called the zoopraxiscope[?]. Muybridge’s experiments inspired French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey[?] to invent equipment for recording and analyzing animal and human movement. Marey called his invention the chronophotographic camera, which was able to take multiple images superimposed on top of one another.
- 1879 - American George Eastman invents an emulsion-coating machine which enables the mass-production of photographic dry plates.
- 1880 - American George Eastman begins to commercially manufacture dry plates for photography.
- 1880 - Eadweard Muybridge holds a public demonstration of his his Zoopraxiscope[?], a Zoetrope adapted to project moving photographic images at the San Francisco Art Association Rooms.
- January 1, 1881 - American inventor George Eastman founds the Eastman Dry Plate Company[?].
- 1882 - American inventors George Eastman begins experimenting with new types of photographic film, with his employee, William Walker[?]
- 1882 - French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey[?] invents the chronophotographic gun[?], a camera shaped like a rifle that photographs twelve successive images each second.
- 1885 - American inventors George Eastman and Hannibal Goodwin[?] each invent a sensitized celluloid paper roll photographic film to replace the glass plates then in use.
- 1887 - Hannibal Goodwin[?] files for a patent for his paper photographic film.
- 1888 - George Eastman files for a patent for his paper photographic film.
- 1888 Thomas Edison meets with Eadweard Muybridge to discuss adding sound to moving pictures. Edison begins his own experiments.
- 1888 - Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince creates the first motion picture films created on paper rolls of film.
- 1889 - American inventor George Eastman's celluloid paper roll photographic film becomes commercially available.
- 1891 - Designed around the work of Muybridge, Marey, and Eastman, Thomas Edison's employee, William K. L. Dickson[?] finishes work on a motion-picture camera, called the Kinetograph[?], and a viewing machine, called the Kinetoscope.
- May 20, 1891 - Thomas Edison holds the first public presentation of his Kinetoscope for the National Federation of Women's Clubs[?].
- August 24, 1891 - Thomas Edison files for a patent of the Kinetoscope.
- 1892 In France, Émile Reynaud[?] began to have public screenings in Paris at the Theatre Optique[?], with hundreds of drawings on a reel that he wound through his Zeotrope projector to construct moving images that continued for 15 minutes.
- 1892 - The Eastman Company[?] becomes the Eastman Kodak Company[?].
- March 14, 1893 - Thomas Edison is granted Patent #493,426 for "An Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects" (The Kinetoscope)[?].
- 1893 Thomas Edison builds a motion-picture studio near his laboratory, dubbed the "Black Maria" by his staff.
- May 9, 1893 - In America, Thomas Edison holds the first public exhibition of films shot using his Kinetograph[?] at the Brooklyn Institute[?]. Unfortunately, only one person at a time could use his viewing machine, the Kinetoscope.
- January 7, 1894 - Thomas Edision[?] films his assistant, Fred Ott[?] sneezing with the Kinetoscope at the "Black Maria."
- April 14, 1894 - The first commercial presentation of the Kinetoscope took place in the Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York City.
- 1894 - Kinetoscope viewing parlors begin to open in major cities. Each parlor contains several machines.
- 1895 - In France, brothers named Auguste[?] and Louis Lumière[?], designed and built a lightweight, hand-held motion picture camera called the Cinématographe[?]. The Lumière brothers discovered that their machine could also be used to project images onto a large screen. The Lumière brothers created several short films at this time that are considered to be pivotal in the history of motion pictures.
- November, 1895 - In Germany, Emil[?] and Max Skladanowsky[?] develope their own film projector.
- December, 1895 - In France, Auguste[?] and Louis Lumière[?] hold their first public screening of films shot with their Cinématographe[?].
- January, 1896 - In Britain, Birt Acres[?] and Robert W. Paul[?] developed their own film projector, the Theatrograph[?] (later known as the Animatograph[?]).
- January, 1896 - In the United States, a projector called the Vitascope[?] was designed by Charles Francis Jenkins[?] and Thomas Armat[?]. Armat began working with Thomas Edison to manufacture the Vitascope[?], which projected motion pictures.
- April, 1896 - Thomas Edison and Thomas Armat[?]'s Vitascope[?] is used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City
- 1896 - French magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès begins experimenting with the new motion picture technology, developing a lot of early special effects techniques, including stop-motion photography.
- 1897 - 125 people die during a film screening at the Charity Bazaar in Paris after a curtain catches on fire from the ether used to fuel the projector lamp.
- 1899 - Pathé-Frères[?] is founded.