🎞️ In the late 19th century, the Lumière family, who ran a photographic plate manufacturing business in Lyon, France, looked beyond capturing static images to the "reproduction of movement." Brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière identified the limitations of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope—which allowed only one person at a time to view images through a peephole—and researched ways to project them onto a large screen. Their efforts resulted in the Cinématographe, a single device capable of filming, developing, and projecting.
📽️ Finally, on this day, March 22, 1895, a historic first demonstration took place at the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry in Paris. Before an audience of scientists and experts, they screened La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). The crowd was astonished to see still photographs come to life on the screen. This was the moment "cinema" was officially reported to the world as a shared visual medium.
Following this technical success, the Lumière brothers held the first public screening for the general audience on December 28 of the same year at the "Salon Indien" in the basement of the Grand Café in Paris. Admission was 1 franc. The basement theater consisted of a screen, a projector, and a piano player to fill the silence. Although only 33 people attended on the first day, the theater was soon overwhelmed by crowds as word spread about the three-dimensional realism of a train rushing toward the screen and the vivid depiction of daily life.
Immediately after the screening, Georges Méliès, a magician in the audience, instantly recognized the potential of this device. He rushed to Antoine Lumière, the father of the brothers, and pleaded to buy the machine, offering 10,000 francs—a staggering sum compared to the 1-franc admission fee. However, Antoine flatly refused, saying:
"This machine is not for sale. It is lucky for you, for this invention will soon be forgotten."
The Lumière family viewed cinema merely as a scientific tool for recording and were certain its lifespan would be short. However, this refusal changed the course of film history. Unable to purchase the machine, Méliès went on to build his own camera and began filling the screens—where the Lumières intended only to "record"—with human "imagination" and "magic." The era of realism was fading, and the era of fantasy was being born.
(To be continued on September 1st)
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