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Texas ISD School Guide
Texas ISD School Guide







Short Stories for Teachers

Motion Picture Camera History (advanced)
By:Lee Grayson

Early parlor amusements and child's toys used the illusion of movement to create interest. Magic lanterns used candles or gas to provide light to illuminate slide images that were projected onto the walls of homes and, later, on large screens in movie theaters. Employing the basic principles used in constructing toys, inventors developed cameras to record action. The origin of the first motion picture camera is debated, with French, English and American pioneers all cited as the originators.

Eadweard Muybridge
Technically, Muybridge recorded action on glass plates, not moving film stock, but his experiments using a dozen print cameras advanced the invention of the motion camera. After five years of work, Muybridge devised a projector (Zoopraxinoscope) in 1878 to show the prints he had taken of people and horses in motion.

Etienne-Jules Marey
Marey advanced Muybridge's experiments to record other animals in 1882. He perfected a photo gun to quickly expose film for a dozen images. By 1888, he had invented a box camera to advance film to record action on consecutive frames.

W.K.L. Dickson and Thomas A. Edison
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson worked on numerous assignments in Edison's Menlo Park laboratory. Edison is usually given full credit for the invention of a movie camera and projector, but Dickson was in fact the main inventor, beginning his experiments in 1888. Using the work of Marey as a basis for the new Kinetograph camera, Dickson developed a punch system in 1891 that allowed the film to be pulled through sprockets. The Dickson-Edison camera shot action at a speed of 46 frames per minute. The team built a studio, called the "Black Maria" by the employees, at the New Jersey lab to create films.

Louis and Auguste Lumiere
The Lumiere brothers were French photographic plate producers and kinetoscope exhibitors who developed their own camera, the Cinematographe, in 1894, which also served as a projector. The motor used a sewing machine motor to advance the 35-millimeter film stock at 16 frames per second. This would remain an industry standard for decades.

R.W. Paul
Paul began duplicating the Edison-Dickson projector in England in 1894. Since the Kinetoscope was without patent restrictions in that country, Paul could legally reproduce the device without penalty. The American team's camera, however, was under English patent, so Paul developed his own device and began to use it the following year.

Herman Casler
W.K.L. Dickson left Edison in 1894 to join Herman Casler, inventor of the Mutoscope card projector system, with whom he created the American Mutoscope Company. A 70-mm camera was developed by the team in 1896 to work with Casler's projector.






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