Technology Reaction: Motion Picture

 During EOTO presentations, I learned about the history and impact of the motion picture. The journey of the motion picture began in 1888, when the French inventor Louis Le Prince became the first person to shoot a motion picture film. The film was titled the "Roundhay Garden Scene" and depicted people walking within the garden. The clip lasted for a short two seconds, and was silent, as sound did not develop till many years later. However, the first evidence of a "moving picture" began with a toy called the zoetrope. This device was invented during the Civil War to make use of photographs taken during wartime; the "toy," as soldiers called it, allowed viewers to see the images in succession, as if they were moving. In 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge captured twelve photographs of a horses' gallop and used a zoetrope to prove to a colleague that all of a horses' hooves left the ground while the animal was in a full run. After both proving a point and creating a motion picture of photographs, Muybridge went on to invent the zoogyroscope in 1879 to show a larger audience the horses' motion picture.

The Kinetophone

The next main event within motion picture's history was in 1891, when American inventor Thomas Edison combined sound with the idea of a motion picture. Edison, working alongside inventor W. K. L. Dickson, created a machine called the Kinetophone. This device allowed viewers to experience sound while watching a film by viewing the motion picture while placing rubber tubes over their ears and listening to the accompanying sounds through a phonograph, almost as if they were using the 19th century version of headphones. In 1913, a newer version of the Kinetophone was marketed to the general public, and ended up producing 19 talking pictures. The presenter mentioned that one of the negative side effects of this piece of technology was that the motion picture with sound was only viewable by one person at a time, as illustrated in the picture below. As technology progressed throughout later years, brilliant minds devised ways for motion pictures to be viewed by the general public, while accompanied by sound. 

In France, during 1895, inventors and brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière create a projector with the ability to display up to sixteen photographs per second. Titled the Cinématographe, the invention allowed for motion pictures to run more smoothly, making them less stop-and-start, and more video-like. 

The Lumière's Cinématographe

The earliest film's displayed to the public were made up of short videos, like animals or children, in clips only a couple seconds long. However, the Lumière brothers managed to film a 50-second long clip of a train arriving in a French station in 1896. The film shows both the train moving and people at the station walking and watching the locomotive. I read online that this feat was so shocking to the public, who had never seen something quite like it, that part of the audience was scared the train would travel through the screen and crash into them. 

Cinematography and the motion picture progress further in the early 1900s, when narrative film making became popularized, and motion pictures began to tell a story. Keeping in mind that these films were still completely void of color and sound, the ability of inventors to produce technology with the purpose of capturing live moments was astounding during this era. 

In 1927, the first motion picture is produced with sound, titled The Jazz Singer. While still in black and

white, the film was created using a sound and disc system under Warner Bros. Pictures. The movie was about an hour and 20 minutes long, including both dialogue and musical numbers, and a detailed plot line. This production marked the era of the rising popularity of the film entertainment industry. Through the 1920s, nearly 100 million people purchased tickets to see movies, on a weekly basis. Ticket prices remained affordable, so almost all economic classes were in attendance. Movies were, and are, arguably the most popular form of entertainment in our media industry.