Lumiere Brothers

The Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis were both technically minded and excelled in science subjects and were sent to Technical School.

Antoine set up a business manufacturing and supplying photographic equipment. Joining him in this venture was Louis who began experimenting with the photographic equipment his father was manufacturing.

He developed a new 'dry plate' process in 1881 at the age of seventeen, it became known as the 'Etiquette Bleue' process and gave his father’s business a welcome boost, and a factory was built soon after to manufacture the plates in the Monplaisir quarter of the Lyons Suburbs. This was a big development in photography.

Antoine was invited to a demonstration of Edison’s Peephole Kinetoscope in Paris. He was excited by what he saw and returned to Lyons. He presented his son Louis with a piece of Kinetoscope film, a prototype which in today's money would have cost more then $1million, given to him by one of Edison’s concessionaires and said, "This is what you have to make, because Edison sells this at crazy prices and the concessionaires are trying to make films here in France to have them cheaper".

They identified two main problems with Edison’s device: its bulk - the Kinetograph - the camera, was a colossal piece of machinery and its weight and size resigned it to the studio. Secondly - the nature of the kinetoscope - the viewer, meant that only one person could experience the films at a time.

By early 1895, the brothers had invented their own device combining camera with printer and projector and called it the Cinématographe. Patenting it on February 13th 1895, the Cinématographe was much smaller than Edison’s Kinetograph, was lightweight (around five kilograms), and was hand cranked. The Lumières used a film speed of 16 frames per second, much slower compared with Edison’s 48 fps - this meant that less film was used an also the clatter and grinding associated with Edison’s device was reduced.

The first of such screenings occurred on 22nd March 1895 at 44 Rue de Rennes in Paris at an industrial meeting where a film especially for the occasion, Workers leaving the Lumière factory, was shown.

Louis photographed the world around him and some of his first films were 'actuality' films, like the workers leaving his father's factory. The brothers began to open theatres to show their films (which became known as cinemas). In the first four months of 1896 they had opened Cinématographe theatres in London, Brussels, Belgium and New York.

In 1907 they produced the first practical colour photography process, the Autochrome Plate.