The magic lantern was invented in the 1600’s, probably by Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist.
It was the earliest form of slide projector and has a long and fascinating history. The first magic lanterns were illuminated by candles, but as technology evolved they were lit by increasingly powerful means. The name “magic lantern” comes from the experience of the early audiences who saw devils and angels mysteriously appear on the wall, as if by magic. Even in the earliest period, performances contained images that moved—created with moving pieces of glass. Read Article: http://www.magiclanternsociety.org/about-magic-lanterns/ The World’s First Horror Movie: Le Manoir du Diable (The Devil’s Castle) made in 1896.
Before faceless multiplexes became the norm, one could always spot a movie theater in the distance, even if it was your first visit to that town. A large illuminated vertical sign announced the name of the cinema, and the triangular marquee below was lined with tiny blinking light bulbs. Even if the film being shown was a dud, that sign out front just lured you inside.
And that was just one of the trimmings that used to make “going to the movies” an event, a night out on the town. If you remember when an usher would scold you for speaking too loud, or had a grandma who had a full set of china only because she’d faithfully attended weeks of Dish Nights, these 11 artifacts might bring back some fond memories. Read Article: mentalfloss.com/article/52164/11-things-we-no-longer-see-movie-theaters Scene from The Great Train Robbery (1903), directed by Edwin S. Porter.
From a private collection History of the motion picture, history of cinema from the 19th century to the present. Early Years, 1830–1910 Origins The illusion of motion pictures is based on the optical phenomena known as persistence of vision and the phi phenomenon. The first of these causes the brain to retain images cast upon the retina of the eye for a fraction of a second beyond their disappearance from the field of sight, while the latter creates apparent movement between images when they succeed one another rapidly. Together these phenomena permit the succession of still frames on a motion-picture film strip to represent continuous movement when projected at the proper speed (traditionally 16 frames per second for silent films and 24 frames per second for sound films). Before the invention of photography, a variety of optical toys exploited this effect by mounting successive phase drawings of things in motion on the face of a twirling disk (the phenakistoscope, c. 1832) or inside a rotating drum (the zoetrope, c. 1834). Then, in 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, a French painter, perfected the positive photographic process known as daguerreotypy, and that same year the English scientist William Henry Fox Talbot successfully demonstrated a negative photographic process that theoretically allowed unlimited positive prints to be produced from each negative. As photography was innovated and refined over the next few decades, it became possible to replace the phase drawings in the early optical toys and devices with individually posed phase photographs, a practice that was widely and popularly carried out. Read Article: https://www.britannica.com/art/history-of-the-motion-picture |
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