History Magazine nr.8 today will be published in France, home of Film.

History of Film

The oldest or earliest surviving film (a sensitized 53.9mm (21/8in) wide paper roll recorded on 1885 Eastman Kodak paper-based photographic film),
 was a short silent titled Roundhay Garden Scene (1888), according to Guinness World Records. It came from the camera of French inventor Louis Aimé
 Augustin Le Prince.



1890 William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, commissioned by Thomas Alva Edison, built the first modern motion-picture camera and named it the Kinetograph.



1890 William K.L. Dickson filmed his first experimental Kinetoscope trial film, Monkeyshines No. 1, the only surviving film from the cylinder kinetoscope,
 and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in the United States



1891  Thomas Edison and his assistant W.K.L. Dickson also developed or invented the Kinetoscope, a single-viewer peep-show device in which film was moved past a light. It was the first recognizable motion picture machine. The first public demonstration of motion pictures in the US using the Kinetoscope occurred at the Edison Laboratories to the Federation of Women’s Clubs on May 20, 1891. The very short film’s subject in the test footage, titled Dickson Greeting

1892  Dickson and Edison built a vertical-feed motion picture camera in the summer of 1892. It used a film strip that was 1 1/2 inches wide. This established the basis for todays standard 35 mm commercial film gauge, occurring in 1897.

1893  Edison constructed the worlds first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey, a Kinetograph production center nicknamed the Black Maria (slang for a police van). Construction began in December 1892, and it was completed by February 1, 1893, at a cost of $637

1894  A short film (about 21 seconds long) titled Carmencita (1894) was directed and produced by Edisons employee William K.L. Dickson. She was filmed March 10-16, 1894 in Edisons Black Maria studio in West Orange, NJ. Spanish dancer Carmencita was the first woman to appear in front of an Edison motion picture camera, and quite possibly the first female to appear in a US motion picture. In some cases, the projection of the scandalous film on a Kinetoscope was forbidden, because it revealed Carmencitas legs and undergarments as she twirled and danced.

1894  Edisons 1-minute Kinetoscope short comedy The Boxing Cats (1894) was possibly the first instance of filmed comedy, in its depiction of two cats
 (donning boxing gloves) in a small boxing ring.



1894-5  The earliest color hand-tinted films ever publically-released were Annabelle Butterfly Dance (1894), Annabelle Sun Dance (1894), and Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895) featuring the dancing of vaudeville-music hall performer Annabelle Whitford (known as Peerless Annabelle) Moore



1895  The first public testing and demonstration of the Lumieres camera-projector system (the Cinematographe) was in their basement. During the private screening to a scientific conference - a trial run for their public screening later at the end of the year (see below), the Lumieres caused a sensation with their first film, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (La Sortie des Ouviers de LUsine Lumiere a Lyon)



1895  The American Mutoscope Company, the first and the oldest movie company in America, was established by William K.L. Dickson, a disenchanted inventor and nickelodeon film producer who had been working with Thomas Edison for a number of years, but left following a disagreement.

1895  The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots (1895) contained the first special effect (in-camera), reportedly, of the controversial execution (decapitation) of Mary, Queen of Scots (Robert Thomae) on the execution block, using a dummy and a trick camera shot (substitution shot or stop trick). It was reportedly the first shot using special effects



1896  The Kiss (1896) (aka The May Irwin Kiss) was the first film ever made of a couple kissing in cinematic history. May Irwin and John Rice re-enacted a lingering kiss for Thomas Edisons film camera in this 20-second long short, from their 1895 Broadway stage play The Widow Jones.



1896  The Pathé-Freres Company was founded in 1896 in Paris by Charles and Emile Pathe. By the next decade, it would become the largest producer of films in the world

1896 The black and white Coronation of the Czar of Russia (1896, Fr.), a news short created by the Lumiere Production Company, recorded the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II, which took place in 1894. It was one of the first significant news events ever recorded.



1897 The Haverstraw Tunnel (1897)  was the first phantom ride film in which a camera was mounted on the front of a train, and recorded its passage into a tunnel.

1897  One of the earliest projects the Edison Studios created (probably in July of 1897) was the advertising film Admiral Cigarette (1897), promoting the slogan We All Smoke. The 28 second-long silent film was the first prototype commercial for the Admiral Cigarette company. Edisons film was the first advertising ilm, or commercial, to be submitted for copyright



to be continued...