History and evolution of film

 

 In 1891, the Edison Company successfully demonstrated a prototype of the Kinetoscope, which enabled one person at a time to view moving pictures. The first to present projected moving pictures to a paying audience were the Lumière brothers in December 1895 in Paris, France. They used a device of their own making, the Cinématographe, which was a camera, a projector and a film printer all in one. 

At first, films were very short, sometimes only a few minutes or less. They were shown at fairgrounds, music halls, or anywhere a screen could be set up and a room darkened. By 1914, several national film industries were established. At this time, Europe, Russia and Scandinavia were the dominant industries. Color was first added to black-and-white movies through hand coloring, tinting, toning and stenciling. The early Technicolor processes from 1915 onwards were expensive, and color was not used more widely until the introduction of its three‑color process in 1932. It was used for films such as Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz (both 1939). 

 Technicolor three color process frame stencil.

The first attempts to add synchronized sound to projected pictures used phonographic cylinders or discs. The first feature-length movie incorporating synchronized dialogue, The Jazz Singer (USA, 1927), used the Warner Brothers’ Vitaphone system, which employed a separate record disc with each reel of film for the sound. 

Vitaphone record disc