Leon Design Core: F I L M

1826 - Nicephore Niepce takes the first photograph in history. (See View from the Window at Le Gras)
1832 - Joseph Plateau (Belgium) and Simon von Stampfer (Vienna) introduced simultaneously a scientific demonstration device that creates an optical illusion of movement by mounting drawings on the face of a slotted, spinning disk. Plateau's version was variously known as the "Phenakistoscope", "Phenakistiscope", "Fenakisticope" or "Fantascope", while Stampfer's version became known as the Stroboscope. The device, originally developed to demonstrate "persistence of vision", was soon marketed as a novelty toy.
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 and the pictures viewed through slots on the side of the drum, the pictures appeared to move. The device was first marketed only in the second half of the 1860s when several patents were taken. It was known as "Zoetrope", "Zootrope", "Wheel of Life", etc.
1870s - French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud improved on the Zoetrope idea by placing mirrors at the center of the drum. He called his invention the Praxinoscope. Reynaud developed other versions of the Praxinoscope too, including a Praxinoscope Theatre, where the device was enclosed in a viewing box, and the Projecting Praxinoscope. Eventually he created the "Theatre Optique", a large machine based on the Praxinoscope, but able to project longer animated strips. In the USA, the McLoughlin Bros from New Year released in 1879 a simplified (and unauthorized) copy of Reynaud's invention under the name "Whirligig of Life".
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.
Eadweard Muybridge holds a public demonstration of his Zoopraxiscope, a magic lantern provided with a rotating disc with artist's renderings of Muybridge's chronophotographic sequences. It was used as a demonstration device by Muybridge in his illustrated lecture (the original preserved in the Museum of Kingston upon Thames in England).
1881- January 1, American inventor George Eastman founds the Eastman Dry Plate Company.
1882 - American inventor George Eastman begins experimenting with new types of photographic film, with his employee, William Walker
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 base roll photographic film to replace the glass plates then in use.
1887 - Hannibal Goodwin files for a patent for his photographic film.
1888 - George Eastman files for a patent for his photographic film.
Thomas Edison meets with Eadweard Muybridge to discuss adding sound to moving pictures. Edison begins his own experiments.
Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince creates the first motion picture films created on paper rolls of film.
1889 - American inventor George Eastman's celluloid base roll photographic film becomes commercially available.
June, 1889 or November, 1890 - William K. L. Dickson, working for Thomas Edison, creates the first known motion picture films shot in the United States, the Monkeyshines films.
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, Thomas Edison holds the first public presentation of his Kinetoscope for the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
August 24, Thomas Edison files for a patent of the Kinetoscope.
1892 In France, Charles-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.
The Eastman Company becomes the Eastman Kodak Company.
1893- March 14, Thomas Edison is granted Patent #493,426 for "An Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects" (The Kinetoscope).
Thomas Edison builds a motion-picture studio near his laboratory, dubbed the "Black Maria" by his staff.
May 9, 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.
1894- January 7, Thomas Edison films his assistant, Fred Ott sneezing with the Kinetoscope at the "Black Maria."
April 14, The first commercial presentation of the Kinetoscope took place in the Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York City.
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, In Germany, Emil and Max Skladanowsky develop their own film projector.
December, In France, Auguste and Louis Lumière hold their first public screening of films shot with their Cinématographe.
1896- January, In Britain, Birt Acres and Robert W. Paul developed their own film projector, the Theatrograph (later known as the Animatograph).
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, Thomas Edison and Thomas Armat's Vitascope is used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City
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.
T.C. Hepworth invents Biokam, a 17.5 mm format which also is the first format to have a center perforation.
John Alfred Prestwich invents a 13 mm amateur format.
Jeanne d'Arc becomes the first film of considerabe length (10 mins) to be shown entirely in colour.
1900- Reulos, Goudeau & Co. invent Mirographe, a 21 mm amateur format.
The Lumiere Brothers premiere their new Lumiere Wide format for the 1900 World Fair. At 75 mm wide, it has held the record for over 100 years as the widest format yet developed.
Raoul Grimoin-Sanson also creates a sensation at the 1900 World Fair with his multi-projector Cineorama spectacle, which uses ten 70 mm projectors to create a simulated 360-degree balloon ride over Paris. The exhibit is closed before it formally opens, however, due to legitimate health and safety concerns regarding the heat of the combined projectors and the highly flammable nitrate film.
W.C. Hughes redesigns the 17.5 mm format to have smaller perforations, and releases the format as La Petite.
Gaumont-Demeny release their own 15 mm amateur format, Pocket Chrono.
1902- March 10 - Circuit Court's decision disallows Thomas Edison from having a monopoly on motion picture technology.
April 2 - Thomas Lincoln Tally opens the Electric Theater, the first permanent movie theater, in Los Angeles.^[1] Tally co-founded the First National Exhibitors Circuit in 1917.^[2]^[3]
Georges Méliès creates the film A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune), which in one scene features the animated human face of the moon being struck in the eye by a rocket.
William Wardell invents an 11 mm amateur film format, Vitak.
1907- January 19 - Variety publishes its first film review.
May 7 - Seattle film maker William Harbeck sets up a camera at the front of a B.C. Electric streetcar and films the downtown streets of Vancouver, British Columbia. Pieces of the film, the earliest survivng of the city,[1] have disappeared, only about 7 minutes remain.[2]
June 20 - L'Enfant prodigue, the first feature-length motion picture produced in Europe, opens in Paris.
November 28 - In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theater (in a few years he had the largest theater chain in New England and in 1917 he founded his own production company, which eventually became part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).
Carl Laemmle, later of Universal, experiments with combining audio from phonographs with film. Laemmle's experiements lead to the German development of "Syncroscope." • The Kalem Company founded in New York City by Frank J. Marion, Samuel Long, and George Kleine. They would make the first Ben-Hur film, directed by Sidney Olcott.
1908- Thomas Edison formed the Motion Picture Patents Company, with goals of controlling production and distribution, raising theater admission prices, cooperating with censorship bodies, and preventing film stock from getting into the hands of nonmember producers.
D. W. Griffith becomes a director at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in •
In the Sultan's Power is the first film ever completely made in Los Angeles, California. It was filmed by director Francis Boggs.
1909- Matsunosuke Onoe, who would become the first superstar of Japanese cinema, appears in his first film, Goban Tadanobu.
James Joyce opens the Volta, the first cinema in Dublin.
1911- March 23: D.W Griffith shows the first major close-up shot on film with the successful release of The Lonedale Operator proving his ever growing mastery of how to utilise film.
October 27: David Horsley's, Nestor Motion Picture Company opens the first motion picture studio in Hollywood.
Defence of Sevastopol premiers a the palace of Tsar Nicholas II and becomes the first feature-length film made in the Russian Empire and one of the first in the World
1912- Edison introduces the Home Kinetoscope, a home film-projector which uses a 22 mm print consisting of three rows of frames.
1913- December 29, Charlie Chaplin signs a contract with Mack Sennett to begin making films at Keystone Studios.
Georges Melies' career as a director comes to an end; Mitchell and Kenyon shoot their last known films.
1914- The 3,300-seat Mark Strand Theatre opens in New York City.
February 2 - Charlie Chaplin's first film, Making a Living is released.
May 8 - Paramount Pictures is formed.
1915- June 18 : The Motion Picture Directors Association (MPDA) is formed by twenty-six film directors in Los Angeles, California.
1916- November 19 - Samuel Goldfish (later renamed Samuel Goldwyn) and Edgar Selwyn establish Goldwyn Pictures, later to became one of the most successful independent filmmakers.
11 mm, an amateur film gauge, appears on the market.
1918- Following litigation for anti-trust activities, the US Supreme Court orders the Motion Picture Patents Company to disband.
28 mm safety standard film, designed by Alexander Victor, becomes one of the earliest film formats to use "safety film" bases in order to safeguard the amateur market against nitrate fires.
Warner Bros. Pictures is established.
1919- February 5 - Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith launch United Artists
1923- April 15 - Lee De Forest demonstrates the Phonofilm sound-on-film system at the Rivoli Theater in New York with a series of short musical films featuring vaudeville performers.
1924- Entertainment entrepreneur Marcus Loew gained control of Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures Corporation and Louis B. Mayer Pictures to create Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) considers making a silent film of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. MGM and the estate of L. Frank Baum failed to come to an agreement so the rights were sold to Chadwick Pictures.
CBC Distributions corp. is renamed Columbia Pictures
1925- December 30: premier of Ben-Hur the most expensive silent film ever made costing 4-6 million dollars (an astronomical sum when adjusted to inflation)
1926- August - Warner Brothers debuts the first Vitaphone film, Don Juan. The Vitaphone system used multiple 33⅓ rpm disc records developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories and Western Electric to play back audio synchronized with film.
1927- January 10 - Fritz Lang's science-fiction fantasy Metropolis premieres in Germany.
April 7 - Abel Gance's Napoleon often considered his best known and greatest masterpiece, premiers (in a shortened version) at the Paris Opéra and would demonstrate techniques and equipment that would not be used for years to come, such as hand-held cameras, and what is often considered the first widescreen projection format Polyvision. It would be more than three decades before films with a widescreen format would again be attempted.
May 11 - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded in Los Angeles, California by Douglas Fairbanks. The 1st Academy Awards (Oscars) went on to films, which are released in 1927 or 1928.
August 12 - Paramount's dramatic film Wings, which would go on to win the first Academy Award for Best Picture, opens at the Criterion Theater in New York City, with an unheard-of roadshow admission price of $2.00 per ticket.
September 23 - FOX Films acquires the rights to the Tri-Ergon sound-on-film technology, which had been developed in 1919 by three German inventors, Josef Engl, Hans Vogt, and Joseph Massole.
October 6 - The Jazz Singer, (starring Al Jolson), premieres at the Warner Theater in New York City. Although not the first 'talkie', The Jazz Singer becomes the first box-office hit and popularizes sound motion pictures. It was the highest-grossing movie of all-time.
1928- July 28 - Lights of New York is released by Warner Brothers. It is the first true talking feature film, in that dialog is spoken throughout the film.
July 31 - Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's mascot Leo the Lion roars for the very first time, creating one of the most popular American film logos.
December 25 - In Old Arizona, released by Fox Films, is the first sound-on-film feature-length talkie, utilizing the Movietone process.
1929- May 16 - The first Academy Awards, or Oscars, are distributed
1930-1931- Many films are made, including shorts and animations. Several new film stars start their careers. John Wayne makes his debut in 1930. The color and sound film industry is fully underway.
1932- Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn', and Shirley Temple's film careers begin