Patented by the Lumières…

Patented by the Lumières in February 1895, the cinématographe (from the Greek for “writing with movement”) was an all-in-one recording device, projector, and negative-to-positive contact printer. It contained a twenty-three-foot-long reel of celluloid 35mm film, which amounted to a duration of fifty seconds. The Lumières, who already sold photographic plates and supplies, intended their new invention for commercial use. The first batch of cinématographes went into production in 1895, and the tools were soon put to use in Paris and beyond. The Lumières’ dominance of the film industry was significant but short-lived, in part because of their focus on equipment; in 1904, competing companies took over camera manufacture.