A Pre-History of Film

Before They Turned on the Lights: Precursors of Cinema, Origins, 19th

Century Cinema:Inventions and developments leading to

the birth of cinema

c. 3200 BC

An earthen bowl found in Shahr-I Sokhta, Iran, had five images of a goat painted along the sides. This is believed to be an example of early animation.

c. 360 BC

Plato’s allegory of the cave described a cinema-like experience of an audience watching silhouetted images in a dark space.

c. 200 BC

Shadow plays first appeared during the Han Dynasty and later gained popularity across Asia.

1515

Leonardo da Vinci described a structure that would produce the Camera Obscura effect.

1671

Athanasius Kircher projected images painted on glass plates with an oil lamp and a lens known as the ‘Magic Lantern' or Lanterna Magica.

1820s

Joseph Plateau: Anorthoscope; Phenakistiscope. Spindle viewers. Flip books

1834

William George Horner developed the Zoetrope, a.k.a., the Daedalum (a revolving cylinder which gives the illusion of motion to the pictures inside). In the same year, William Fox Talbot began experimenting on fixing positive images onto sensitized paper.

1839

Henry Langdon Childe further developed the Magic Lantern by introducing dissolving views. In the same year, Louis Daguerre demonstrated the Daguerrotype which fixed an image onto a sensitized copper plate. John William Herschel called his similar fixed images 'photographs'.

1877

Muybridge began experimenting with "Serial Photography" (or "Chronophotography"). He took multiple exposed images of a running horse.

1878

• George Eastman manufactured photographic dry plates, the same year Thomas Edison invented the first electric incandescent light bulb, archaically known as a Magic Lantern.

1888

Marey designed the Chronophotograph (a camera using roll film).

1889

• 1889 - Kodak celluloid roll film became available.

1891

• Edison patented the Kinetograph developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, which took moving pictures on a strip of film. A lighted box (the Kinetoscope) was used to view the pictures; the viewer was required to turned a handle to see the pictures "move". First called "Arcade Peepshows", these were to soon be known as nickelodeons. Fred Ott's Sneeze is the first Kinetographic film.

1895

• The Arrival of a Train premiered on a large screen December 28 at the Grand Cafe in Paris, France. Louis and his brother Auguste Lumiere also filmed Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory that year, while in the US Woodville Latham combined a Kinetoscope with a projecting device. People were avidly watching nickelodeons on Broadway in New York City.