1890s in Film - Events

Events

• 1890 - Wordsworth Donisthorpe and W. C. Crofts, filmed London's Trafalgar Square using a camera patented in 1889.
• 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, and a viewing machine, called the Kinetoscope.
• May 20, 1891 - Thomas Edison holds the first public presentation of his Kinetoscope for the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
• August 24, 1891 - Thomas Edison files for a patent of the Kinetoscope.
• 1892 In France, Charles-Émile Reynaud began to have public screenings in Paris at the Théâtre Optique, with hundreds of drawings on a reel that he wound through his Zoetrope projector to construct moving images that continued for 15 minutes.
• 1892 - The Eastman Company becomes the Eastman Kodak Company.
• March 14, 1893 - Thomas Edison is granted Patent #493,426 for "An Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects" (The Kinetoscope).
• 1893 Thomas Edison builds a motion-picture studio near his laboratory, dubbed the "Black Maria" by his staff.
• May 9, 1893 - In America, 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.
• January 7, 1894 - Thomas Edison films his assistant, Fred Ott sneezing with the Kinetoscope at the "Black Maria."
• April 14, 1894 - The first commercial presentation of the Kinetoscope took place in the Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York City.
• 1894 - 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 1895 - In Germany, Emil and Max Skladanowsky develop their own film projector.
• December 1895 - In France, Auguste and Louis Lumière hold their first public screening of films shot with their Cinématographe.
• January 1896 - In Britain, Birt Acres and Robert W. Paul developed their own film projector, the Theatrograph (later known as the Animatograph).
• January 1896 - 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 1896 - Thomas Edison and Thomas Armat's Vitascope is used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City
• 1896 - 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 - A total of 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.