Speaker 1: Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick, and we're back with another part of our
Speaker 1: exploration of the invention of the motion picture. So, as
Speaker 1: we were discussing in the previous episode, so, I think
Speaker 1: one of the things we've we've been trying to lay
Speaker 1: the groundwork for, is that the idea of the motion picture,
Speaker 1: like the movies we watched today, was not one of
Speaker 1: these inventions that just like comes out of nowhere, right,
Speaker 1: the Eureka moment that strikes some brilliant inventor's brain. The
Speaker 1: motion picture very much grew out of several streams of
Speaker 1: existing technology, right, absolutely, Yeah, there's not just one individual
Speaker 1: as this is this dream of motion pictures and then
Speaker 1: develops it, invents it, and then an unveils the motion
Speaker 1: picture for a hungry for the hungry masses to view. Right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's something also that I think people's taste for
Speaker 1: in a way had to develop up over time. And
Speaker 1: I think we can explore that more as the episodes
Speaker 1: go on. But uh, where we're starting today, I think
Speaker 1: there are three major streams of technology that are feeding
Speaker 1: into the development of the motion picture. So one is
Speaker 1: something we talked about last time that we might call
Speaker 1: animation devices like the Phoenickista cope or the Phoenikista scope
Speaker 1: it's been called both, or the zootrope. These were toys
Speaker 1: that created an illusion of continuous motion by rolling through
Speaker 1: a succession of still images that took advantage of loopholes
Speaker 1: in the way that our eyes and our brains perceive images,
Speaker 1: known as a parent movement. Basically, it was an optical
Speaker 1: illusion that allowed a bunch of still images to appear
Speaker 1: to us as something that is moving, right, And these
Speaker 1: were devices that grew out of the age of photography.
Speaker 1: So these were not ancient by any or really any
Speaker 1: older than photographic technology. Right. But these early animation devices
Speaker 1: were mostly known for animating like drawings or silhouette cutouts.
Speaker 1: But an interesting question you might have wondered about at
Speaker 1: the time, say it's the eighteen seventies of the eighteen
Speaker 1: eighties or so, you might be getting to wonder if
Speaker 1: you could combine the optical principles here in the in
Speaker 1: these animation devices of a parent movement generated by looking
Speaker 1: at successive still images really fast with another technology and development,
Speaker 1: which of course is photography, so to replace these hand
Speaker 1: drawn or hand cut still images with direct records of
Speaker 1: scenes in reality exactly. And then finally, another technology that
Speaker 1: we've explored a lot less so far but will become
Speaker 1: really important in today's episode that feeds into the history
Speaker 1: of the motion picture is something that's known as the
Speaker 1: magic lantern, and that's an invention that had existed for
Speaker 1: centuries by the time of the motion picture was invented.
Speaker 1: But essentially you can think of it as kind of
Speaker 1: an early version of the slide projector. You ever like
Speaker 1: go over to you know, back in the day, you
Speaker 1: go over to somebody's house and they want to show
Speaker 1: you pictures of their vacation, and they go through the
Speaker 1: slide projector it shows them up on a screen or
Speaker 1: up on the wall. Oh yeah, I mean, I fondly
Speaker 1: remember my family's own slide projector. I was never really
Speaker 1: allowed to mess with it, uh, and maybe that's why
Speaker 1: it was so fascinating And then you broke it. No,
Speaker 1: I never never never got the chance. Okay, I guess
Speaker 1: some some schools use these two occasionally. Yeah, I definitely
Speaker 1: remember projectors, slide projectors coming up in in classroom environments
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, But basically it combines a transparent plate
Speaker 1: on which an image is drawn or otherwise captured, uh,
Speaker 1: and a lens and a light source that shines through
Speaker 1: the plate that has the image on it, and through
Speaker 1: the lens projecting the image on a surface or screen. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean I should also add that, of course, you
Speaker 1: have you have other old performance methods that involved you know,
Speaker 1: shadow puppets, yes exactly, which would have also been a
Speaker 1: projection based medium. Well, that's a really great point. I mean,
Speaker 1: one way to create a very crude version of a
Speaker 1: motion picture would be to use a magic lantern to
Speaker 1: project images and then actually just to move the plate
Speaker 1: or elements within the plate around, kind of like you
Speaker 1: would move your hands in a shadow puppet show. You know,
Speaker 1: like if you're projecting through a glass plate and you've
Speaker 1: got things on the plate, you could kind of have
Speaker 1: them dance around and fight each other and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But obviously you'd be fairly limited in
Speaker 1: what you could do with that. So all three of
Speaker 1: these are not motion pictures, and yet they all kind
Speaker 1: of converge into the idea of the motion picture. Right
Speaker 1: if you combine these three principles, you've pretty much got
Speaker 1: the earliest makings of a live action movie, but we're
Speaker 1: not there yet. A sort of early combination of these
Speaker 1: three elements was another device that we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: last episode, the Zoa practice scope, which was invented by
Speaker 1: Edward my Bridge, the photographer and inventor around the end
Speaker 1: of the eighteen seventies. So you remember we talked about
Speaker 1: Edward my Bridge in the last episode where he didn't
Speaker 1: just use one camera, but he would use a battery
Speaker 1: of cameras to capture a bunch of images really fast.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Yes, as the as a horse ran by, this
Speaker 1: battery of cameras would go off, resulting in this this, this,
Speaker 1: this series of images to portray the locomotion of the horse. Right,
Speaker 1: So if he wanted to like show off those images
Speaker 1: in a way that wasn't just like you know, looking
Speaker 1: at them one at a time. He he could sort
Speaker 1: of animate them together. And that's what the zoo practicoscope
Speaker 1: was for. Uh. He used a very complicated process to
Speaker 1: sort of treat and re render the silhouettes of all
Speaker 1: those still images taken really fast by a battery of cameras,
Speaker 1: and then it would put he would put them around
Speaker 1: the edge of a glass disk in sequence, which could
Speaker 1: then be rotated in front of a projected light source,
Speaker 1: showing off the sort of realism of movement captured frame
Speaker 1: by frame. But of course, even if you look at this,
Speaker 1: this is sort of the principle of the motion picture.
Speaker 1: But I think most people wouldn't think that it was
Speaker 1: a movie just yet. Now, at this point in the story,
Speaker 1: we have to reintroduce a character who has already shown
Speaker 1: up on invention in the past. I believe he made
Speaker 1: an appearance in our X ray episode. Oh really, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he shows up a lot in the especially like the
Speaker 1: second half of the nineteen hundreds. If you're dealing with inventions,
Speaker 1: whether or not he necessarily deserves all the credit for
Speaker 1: some breakthrough, he may show up in the story, right
Speaker 1: and you, yeah, you can't remove him from the story.
Speaker 1: He was a major player, right. So this is where
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison enters the picture. So you may have heard
Speaker 1: that the prolific inventor and businessman Thomas Alva Edison invented
Speaker 1: the motion picture, And I think if that is what
Speaker 1: you believe, you are sort of unwittingly a part of
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison's diabolical plan. Uh, though he did play a
Speaker 1: very important role in the early development of the motion
Speaker 1: picture I don't want to play that game. A lot
Speaker 1: of people really love to sort of over demonize Thomas Edison.
Speaker 1: I think there are some very valid critiques of the
Speaker 1: man historically, but you know, a lot of people just
Speaker 1: like that. They go the Tesla versus Edison route, and
Speaker 1: like Tesla is the hero and Edison's the villain. But
Speaker 1: I do think it's basically true. A lot of what
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison did was come up with, or catch wind
Speaker 1: of innovative technological concepts that are sort of on the
Speaker 1: edge of discovery, and then hire other people to do
Speaker 1: the heavy lifting of designing these things, so then Edison
Speaker 1: could reap the much of the profit and the credit himself.
Speaker 1: And one of these assistants that Edison hired who worked
Speaker 1: for Edison was a guy named William Kennedy Lorie Dickson,
Speaker 1: also known often in books referenced as W. K. L.
Speaker 1: Dixon and Dickson was a photographer, and this may have
Speaker 1: been part of the reason that in June eight eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Edison selected him to actually design a device that Edison
Speaker 1: had kind of conceptualized, which he was calling the kinetoscope,
Speaker 1: of course, from kineto meaning movement and scope meaning like
Speaker 1: to see or to watch. But you might wonder where
Speaker 1: did Edison get this idea from. Well, we can't know
Speaker 1: for sure all of what Edison had in mind before this,
Speaker 1: so I think there's some indication he may have already
Speaker 1: been interested in the idea of move being images. But
Speaker 1: one thing we do know that I was reading about
Speaker 1: is that in eighty eight Edward my Bridge visited Edison's
Speaker 1: laboratory in New Jersey. Apparently my Bridge was there to
Speaker 1: suggest a partnership. UH see, Edison and his lab workers
Speaker 1: had recently invented a device, or not not quite so recently.
Speaker 1: It was around eighteen seventy seven. I think it was
Speaker 1: patented in eighteen seventy eight called the phonograph, And the
Speaker 1: phonograph was huge. It was a big breakthrough. It was
Speaker 1: a sound recording and playback device that was immensely popular.
Speaker 1: It would later evolve into the record player, though the
Speaker 1: original uh phonograph both recorded and played back cylinders, not disks,
Speaker 1: you know, if I remember correctly, These pop up in
Speaker 1: brom Stoker's novel Dracula Really yeah, some of the you know,
Speaker 1: it's all a little bits, tidbits from various people's journals
Speaker 1: and diaries and in some cases their cylinder recording. Oh
Speaker 1: Dr Seward does he do dictation on phonograph cylinders? See,
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly which characters. I know it's not Dracula,
Speaker 1: and there are no chapters from Dracula's perspective, unfortunately. But yeah,
Speaker 1: So so Edison and his people they had the phonograph,
Speaker 1: and that was this very popular revolutionary technology could record
Speaker 1: in playback sound. And so in February of eight, my
Speaker 1: Bridge showed up with an idea. He said, Hey, let's collaborate.
Speaker 1: I'll pare your phonograph with Miso practice scope, and we'll
Speaker 1: have sound accompanying moving pictures, which is perfect. Like, that's
Speaker 1: exactly the direction things we're gonna go in. Edison passed,
Speaker 1: and he was like not interested. But then pretty much
Speaker 1: immediately Edison moved on the idea of creating an improved
Speaker 1: motion picture capture and playback device quote to do for
Speaker 1: the eye what the phonograph does for the ear. And
Speaker 1: this would be the kinetoscope that we mentioned a moment ago.
Speaker 1: So I don't think you can say that Edison was
Speaker 1: stealing my Bridge's idea because what they would eventually come
Speaker 1: up with was so much better and more practical than
Speaker 1: the Zoo practice practice code. But it does seem right
Speaker 1: that he thought, you know, instead of partnering with this guy,
Speaker 1: I can just make a much better version of his thing.
Speaker 1: Whether that's crooked or not, I don't know. I'll leave
Speaker 1: that up to you to judge. So in eighteen eighty nine,
Speaker 1: Edison tasks uh William Dixon, his his worker W. K. L. Dixon,
Speaker 1: with inventing this device that he has conceptualized to do
Speaker 1: for the eye what the phonograph did for the year,
Speaker 1: essentially a video recording and playback device, and apparently early
Speaker 1: prototypes did not work very well. One idea seemed to
Speaker 1: be inspired by the phonograph cylinder, Uh, and it was
Speaker 1: the idea that you would place tiny reflective photos on
Speaker 1: a cylinder that would simulate motion through reflected light. As
Speaker 1: the cylinder spun, you can kind of just like picture.
Speaker 1: That not working very well, so you might want or okay,
Speaker 1: how do we solve these problems? Well. In the last episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about the French physiologist A Tene Jules Moray
Speaker 1: who in the eighteen seventies invented this device that was
Speaker 1: called the Chrono photographic gun, or at least that's what
Speaker 1: we called it at the Chrona Photograph uh And it
Speaker 1: was like this scientific instrument. It's kind of like a
Speaker 1: machine gun for taking pictures. Its goal was to rapidly
Speaker 1: capture a lot of photographs very quickly, around twelve photos
Speaker 1: per second on a rotating piece of glass on which
Speaker 1: photographic emulsions had been prepared inside a drum. That makes
Speaker 1: it look kind of like a mutated Tommy gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's super weird. It's like a Wizards machine gun. It's whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh So, so it's a precursor in the
Speaker 1: movie camera in a way. But it also straight up
Speaker 1: looks like a rifle. And Murray was inspired by Edward
Speaker 1: my Bridge's work and he used the chrona Photographic gun
Speaker 1: to take lots of pictures really fast, of like birds
Speaker 1: in flight, to get a better idea of what's happened
Speaker 1: with the movements of a bird's wings and body during flight,
Speaker 1: which normally happens too fast for us to see is
Speaker 1: just a blur. So Murray was very much in the
Speaker 1: in the spirit of science. He was not trying to
Speaker 1: create an entertainment device. He was trying to study nature,
Speaker 1: study the locomotion and of birds in this case. So
Speaker 1: in a way, Murray's Gun was a step in the
Speaker 1: right direction toward motion pictures. But because it it has
Speaker 1: some limitations that either variously relied on either plate glass
Speaker 1: exposures or relatively fragile paper film, there's no way you
Speaker 1: could use it to record more than a very short
Speaker 1: period of motion, maybe like a second or two, and
Speaker 1: you couldn't effectively load and have ready enough of the
Speaker 1: medium it recorded the images on to make it, you know,
Speaker 1: something that could record for extended periods of time. But
Speaker 1: it seems Edison did draw some inspiration from Murray in principle.
Speaker 1: And this is where another individual from a past episode
Speaker 1: pops up, an individual who played an important role in
Speaker 1: the development of photographic technology. G George Eastman. That's right.
Speaker 1: So Eastman played an important role, uh with helping come
Speaker 1: up with the medium. So Eastman of Eastman Kodak, of course,
Speaker 1: who we discussed previously, had created paper film rolls that
Speaker 1: did not require glass plates. And this is this is
Speaker 1: an important step in in thinking about the media on
Speaker 1: which photographs are recorded, because just think about if you
Speaker 1: had to create a movie cameras capturing I don't know,
Speaker 1: so you're trying to capture forty frames per second or
Speaker 1: even if you're going low and just trying to do
Speaker 1: like sixteen frames per second or something, and you want
Speaker 1: to do that all on like glass plates. How do
Speaker 1: you do that? You do use like glass glass plates
Speaker 1: framed with wood that are on like a belt chain
Speaker 1: together to go past the camera to get exposed. How
Speaker 1: many times per second? You can imagine how the medium
Speaker 1: there makes the camera set up really unwieldy and and
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, impossible to record more than a
Speaker 1: few seconds at a time. Right, Yeah, you're coming up
Speaker 1: against the hard limits of the of the material there.
Speaker 1: I would love to see one of these, though. I'm
Speaker 1: sure there's a great version of like a steampunk video
Speaker 1: game or something that has like just like giant drums
Speaker 1: of glass plate belts rattling through as the cameras shooting
Speaker 1: on them. Uh So, one thing Eastman had created by
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight was paper film roles that didn't require
Speaker 1: glass plates. Uh this wasn't the first paper film, but
Speaker 1: this was a version of paper film. Uh and and
Speaker 1: this is an improvement because you can imagine at least okay,
Speaker 1: paper can be like rolled up in great quantities that
Speaker 1: you could feed through a camera if you needed to
Speaker 1: shoot tons of photos in quick succession. Right, it begins
Speaker 1: to to make it possible to really um capture footage
Speaker 1: of of of the world in action. Yeah, but this
Speaker 1: paper film was relatively fragile, flimsy, difficult to work with.
Speaker 1: It just wasn't very good. Meanwhile, a year before, in
Speaker 1: eighteen eighty seven, an American Episcopalian rector named Hannibal Goodwin
Speaker 1: who lived in Newark, New Jersey, came up with a
Speaker 1: different ideas, an idea for a medium for photographic exposures,
Speaker 1: and that would be celluloid. Now, celluloid is a transparent
Speaker 1: kind of synthetic plastic invented in the eighteen sixties. And
Speaker 1: to to make it, you can start with natural cellulose,
Speaker 1: which is a plant polymer that you'd find in cotton
Speaker 1: or wood or in himp. Cotton is like mostly cellulose,
Speaker 1: so you can just picture a ball of cotton, and
Speaker 1: then you take that cell cellulose and you treat it
Speaker 1: with nitric acid and this gives you an extremely flammable
Speaker 1: plastic compound called nitro cellulose, and nitro cellulose and celluloid
Speaker 1: become the early basis of film technology, creating these continuous
Speaker 1: strips of plastic that could serve as film roles. Uh
Speaker 1: And originally, though it's funny reading about how celluloid plastic
Speaker 1: in the like eighteen sixties seventies that served all kinds
Speaker 1: of weird uses, or at least people imagined it would
Speaker 1: like as a substitute for expensive precious materials like ivory,
Speaker 1: or it was also used in clothing. I've read something
Speaker 1: about like men's shirts and stuff being having cell celluloid components.
Speaker 1: Another one was I read about somebody's idea to use
Speaker 1: celluloid to make billiard balls. Um. But eventually Eastman and
Speaker 1: collaborators would switch over to producing roles of celluloid based film,
Speaker 1: and this could be manufactured in the kinds of long,
Speaker 1: durable roles necessary for exposing the dozens or hundreds or
Speaker 1: thousands of shots necessary to record more than a second
Speaker 1: or two of motion picture. Uh. Though Eastman did have
Speaker 1: a long running patent dispute with Hannibal Goodwin and his
Speaker 1: estate about celluloid film. They had to go back and
Speaker 1: forth about who had the rights to do what with it.
Speaker 1: But once this durable plastic film celluloid film was available
Speaker 1: in bulk from Eastman, William Dixon and Edison and colleagues
Speaker 1: suddenly had new kinds of option is open to them,
Speaker 1: Like this would allow you to do a lot more
Speaker 1: with filming the world and why did they ever film
Speaker 1: the world? We're going to take a quick break and
Speaker 1: when we come back we'll continue our discussion with the
Speaker 1: history of the motion picture. Alright, We're back, all right,
Speaker 1: So I guess we should discuss some design issues with
Speaker 1: the movie camera that William Dixon in Edison's lab was
Speaker 1: trying to create. One problem would be this, do you
Speaker 1: ever think about the like, how does a movie camera
Speaker 1: simulate motion? In the last episode we talked about how
Speaker 1: it has to simulate motion by showing you still images
Speaker 1: in a very rapid succession. This is the way that
Speaker 1: the optical illusion works. Uh. And it doesn't work to
Speaker 1: take say a few hundred photos in succession and then
Speaker 1: roll them past your eyes in one smooth emotion, right,
Speaker 1: because what would you see there? Just a blur? Right?
Speaker 1: That won't cut it right. I mean, that's not showing
Speaker 1: you a succession of still in images. That's just showing
Speaker 1: you images that are moving top to bottom or moving
Speaker 1: side to side too fast for you to look at them.
Speaker 1: So instead, what you have to do is find a
Speaker 1: way to project lots of distinct, unmoving images very rapidly,
Speaker 1: one after another. So how to do that? Well, if
Speaker 1: you've ever think about what celluloid film roles look like,
Speaker 1: especially movie film, you know those holes in the sides
Speaker 1: of the film strip, Well that's where they come in. Uh.
Speaker 1: These holes allowed their devices to rapidly grab the film
Speaker 1: strip with a fast moving lever that had teeth to
Speaker 1: fit the holes, advance exactly one frame, project that frame
Speaker 1: through the shutter without moving it, and then close the
Speaker 1: shutter and advance the next frame. So you're hitting here's
Speaker 1: the image, and then here's the new image, here's the
Speaker 1: here's the next image. Yeah again, not just running it
Speaker 1: through like it's the like the belt on an engine, right,
Speaker 1: but dozens of frames for second and it has to
Speaker 1: stop on each one. So in AUGUSTE. Edison filed for
Speaker 1: a patent on two separate machines, the kinetic graph, which
Speaker 1: was the movie camera and the Kineta scope, which was
Speaker 1: the movie playback device. And these were two separate things,
Speaker 1: so that the Kinetic Graph camera was this gigantic, monstrous
Speaker 1: electrical device for shooting films. It weighed like a thousand
Speaker 1: pounds or something. It was huge. Uh. It used components
Speaker 1: modeled on the internal workings of a clock to ensure
Speaker 1: the regular stop and start motion of advancing the film
Speaker 1: and stopping it one frame at a time, and to
Speaker 1: synchronize the opening of the shutter with the placement of
Speaker 1: the next frame. And this device initially filmed at a
Speaker 1: rate of about forty frames per second. Meanwhile, the Kineta
Speaker 1: scope was a large wooden cabinet about four ft high
Speaker 1: that held a film strip inside, and this was the
Speaker 1: dedicated playback device for films made on the Kinetic graph.
Speaker 1: The viewer would look through a lens at the top
Speaker 1: of the cabinet, kind of like the eyepiece for a
Speaker 1: view master. Did you ever have one of those? Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's not really a screen. It's like binoculars that
Speaker 1: you know, you put your eyes in and you look
Speaker 1: down into the machine, and inside the machine the film
Speaker 1: hung from rollers and during playback it would be advanced rapidly,
Speaker 1: one frame at a time by an electrically powered sprocket
Speaker 1: with an electric lamp shining up through each frame into
Speaker 1: the viewing lens, which allows you to see the motion
Speaker 1: picture projected into your eyes. Right, and now that this
Speaker 1: is impressive, don't get me wrong. But but obviously the
Speaker 1: limitations are apparent, Like this is a device that can
Speaker 1: be used by one person at a time. It is
Speaker 1: a large cabinet. Uh, it's more like a peep show
Speaker 1: as opposed to what you might think of as a
Speaker 1: as movie viewing, certainly as a communal experience. That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: I mean, can you imagine a world where everybody was
Speaker 1: just walking around staring into their own individual devices to
Speaker 1: watch video and weren't interacting with each other. Yes, but
Speaker 1: it is a great point because the history of of
Speaker 1: motion picture technology, cinematic technology, the ability to watch the
Speaker 1: moving image. Uh, it's kind of you see these different
Speaker 1: trends like the like, like something will be individual and
Speaker 1: then it will go communal, and then there'll be new
Speaker 1: ways to make it more individual again and generally with
Speaker 1: the we see it both ways. Like here, the advancements
Speaker 1: would make movie viewing more communal, and then later on
Speaker 1: it would be in the different direction. Let's take let's
Speaker 1: take this thing that is that has to be communal,
Speaker 1: and let's let you do it in the privacy of
Speaker 1: your own home. Um, and I imagine you know, they're
Speaker 1: they're they're pros and cons with with both with both directions. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean this was a very different viewing experience, even
Speaker 1: then looking at a video on your phone. Uh, it
Speaker 1: was just extremely different because number one, um, we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little bit more about where these kinetoscopes were deployed,
Speaker 1: but they would be out in public semi public places,
Speaker 1: you know, and you could go use one. And while
Speaker 1: the kinetoscope parlor might be a happen and hang out
Speaker 1: when you view the movie, you're viewing it alone with
Speaker 1: your face attached to a box. That's not like going
Speaker 1: to a movie theater, like you're saying. It's completely different
Speaker 1: kind of culture around how these things are viewed. But
Speaker 1: also the films had to be very different then because
Speaker 1: of the technical physical limitations on the film strips, on
Speaker 1: the kinetograph, and on the kinetoscope the way they were built,
Speaker 1: you can only accommodate about fifty feet or about fourteen
Speaker 1: meters of celluloid film at a time and then play
Speaker 1: it back. So this severely limits the length that the
Speaker 1: film can be. It makes it you know, it could
Speaker 1: be maybe fifteen seconds or so. So let's say you
Speaker 1: saunter up to a kinetoscope, you know, you go, you
Speaker 1: go to the local kinetoscope parlor and you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a look see into one of these things. What did
Speaker 1: you watch in there? Well, Edison essentially had to become
Speaker 1: not just an inventor, but a a media mogul, like
Speaker 1: a film producer, because nobody else was making films to
Speaker 1: go in this thing. He had to make the content
Speaker 1: to go in the device. So he founded a movie
Speaker 1: studio in West Orange, New Jersey to record the first
Speaker 1: real commercial motion pictures. And these movies tended to be
Speaker 1: like short spectacles. Uh. Again, due to the limitations on
Speaker 1: the technology, they couldn't be more than, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: seconds or so. And they didn't have dedicated sound because
Speaker 1: even though Edison was into pairing this thing with the phonograph,
Speaker 1: they couldn't yet figure out how to synchronize the movie
Speaker 1: and the sound right. And at the time, there wasn't
Speaker 1: really a practice of film editing, which meant that the
Speaker 1: you know, the convention was that the film would be
Speaker 1: shot in one take. So what ended up on these
Speaker 1: early films were things that were brief and kind of
Speaker 1: interesting to look at and could be done all at
Speaker 1: once in one take. Many of them were like quick
Speaker 1: vaudeville acts featuring slapstick comedy or circus performances like you know,
Speaker 1: so Ballerina's dancing, or people like doing trapeze acts, or
Speaker 1: a strong man lifting something. Right. I mean, basically, the
Speaker 1: technology allowed you to capture motion, and so you just
Speaker 1: had to go out and find interesting examples of motion.
Speaker 1: The person doing this, an animal doing this, a machine
Speaker 1: doing this. Now that might sound boring to us, but
Speaker 1: these things people were very interested in seeing this, Like
Speaker 1: this was a hot technology. People were into it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I can imagine, you know, we can
Speaker 1: talking about how it's not a communal thing to watch it,
Speaker 1: but you know, you might go with somebody to see this.
Speaker 1: You would each have your turn looking into the machine,
Speaker 1: witnessing the motion, and then you would inevitably talk about it.
Speaker 1: Did you see that? Was that not amazing? You just
Speaker 1: you looked in it and and there it was brought
Speaker 1: to life. Yeah, and so in the eight ten nineties, kinetoscopes,
Speaker 1: the viewing machines were bought and put anywhere I would say,
Speaker 1: you might normally see some kind of cabinet attraction or
Speaker 1: game machine, So amusement parks, the lobbies of public buildings,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Dedicated kinetoscope parlors also became popular, starting
Speaker 1: in New York City. They were sort of like a
Speaker 1: video arcade where people would go and line up at cabinets,
Speaker 1: not to play street fighter, but to look through the
Speaker 1: peep hole and watch the films inside the boxes. I
Speaker 1: am trying to imagine what it would what what it
Speaker 1: would have been like to be in one of these
Speaker 1: uh kinetoscope parlors, because you'd have it was like a
Speaker 1: public setting, but you would be frequently while you were there,
Speaker 1: like going into this other world for fifteen seconds or so,
Speaker 1: where you would lose your body and you disappear into
Speaker 1: the machine and the machine is your awareness, but everybody
Speaker 1: could see you. So you're just standing there with your
Speaker 1: face in this cabinet and like you, I don't know
Speaker 1: this this weird public, private kind of thing, you know,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what it would be like. I remember
Speaker 1: when when we went to New York City and we
Speaker 1: went to a premiere of One Strange Rock. Okay, they
Speaker 1: had these helmets. When you put the helmet on and
Speaker 1: you would it was like part of the marketing thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the daft punk helmets, and it was like this daft punk,
Speaker 1: like really cool helmets, very well designed. You put them
Speaker 1: on and you would get to see in here in
Speaker 1: this case, um like essentially a trailer for the show,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty impressive projecting it inside a screen
Speaker 1: on the inside of the helmet. So you're just sitting
Speaker 1: there in a room full of people having cocktails and
Speaker 1: wandering around and you've got a helmet on and you're
Speaker 1: like drooling. Well yeah, so I imagine that's kind of
Speaker 1: what this was like. Okay, well that was I'm not
Speaker 1: saying I didn't appreciate the experience. It was a little
Speaker 1: awkward standing there in a room full of people with
Speaker 1: your own consciousness engaged inside a device. Yeah, but then
Speaker 1: when you put the device on, it's pretty cool. And likewise,
Speaker 1: the kinetoscope would have had a similar experience. Again, it's
Speaker 1: just I imagine a lot of people standing around talking
Speaker 1: about it, like man what was it like when you
Speaker 1: looked into it. Did you see that horse running? Did
Speaker 1: you see that you know whatever, the particular bit of
Speaker 1: motion that was captured, whatever it was like, people would
Speaker 1: just be geeking out over it. Yeah, And so what
Speaker 1: did Edison think about the potential of this this thing?
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously people were excited about it. You get
Speaker 1: kind of mixed feelings reading about this that in some
Speaker 1: ways it seems like he didn't at first seem to
Speaker 1: fully realize the potential of films as their own extended medium,
Speaker 1: Like he obviously failed to make some certain leaps from
Speaker 1: the kinetoscope and the kinetograph immediately, right, Like it's easy
Speaker 1: to imagine, I'm guessing where you're thinking, Like, Okay, I've
Speaker 1: created an entertaining, uh side show, a machine for amusement,
Speaker 1: and I can see them continuing to be a successful thing.
Speaker 1: Like maybe it's it's like a pinball machine exactly, there's
Speaker 1: the one in the front of a pizza joint. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and maybe if you're like really savvy, you might see
Speaker 1: the future nefarious uses of essentially peep show machines. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, like you're not imagining the Academy
Speaker 1: Awards but then at the same time, I mean Edison,
Speaker 1: he says like some grandiose stuff about it there. This
Speaker 1: was later, I think this was in like in the
Speaker 1: nineteen teens or something, But I found a quote where
Speaker 1: he once remarked, I am spending more than my income
Speaker 1: getting up a set of six thousand films to teach
Speaker 1: the nineteen million students in the schools of the United
Speaker 1: States to do away entirely with books. Dear god Edison,
Speaker 1: step back, friend, Well, I mean, clearly he was. He
Speaker 1: he had doubled down on that point and said, no,
Speaker 1: not only is this an important technology, it's the important technology.
Speaker 1: It's going to erase the written word from our schools. Now. Edison, Dixon,
Speaker 1: and and the people we've mentioned so far definitely were
Speaker 1: not the only people to serve in the creation of
Speaker 1: motion pictures around the you know, the eighteen eighties. This
Speaker 1: was in the air and other people were sort of
Speaker 1: working on this. It does seem that Dixon and Edison
Speaker 1: got there first with commercially viable, patented machines, but it
Speaker 1: seems that a French inventor named Louis la Prince got
Speaker 1: there before Edison's lab to make a movie camera that worked,
Speaker 1: though he never got to capitalize on his work. Uh
Speaker 1: La Prince invented a motion picture camera. He shot several
Speaker 1: films in England around the year eighteen eighty eight, and
Speaker 1: he'd been planning to show off his invention in the
Speaker 1: United States in the year eight teen ninety. But then
Speaker 1: something very strange happened. Mysteriously, he disappeared before he had
Speaker 1: a chance to show off his invention. And we're actually
Speaker 1: going to devote an entire episode to this subject to
Speaker 1: explore this mystery, in an episode where we'll be joined
Speaker 1: next time by our friend Scott Benjamin. But a short
Speaker 1: version is that that Edison is the name that remains
Speaker 1: important here. Yes, certainly is getting the credit, right, though
Speaker 1: I think more recent historians would probably say it looks
Speaker 1: like Dixon did more of the work, and of course
Speaker 1: Edison just sort of like owned his work and was
Speaker 1: his boss and then got the credit for it. All Right, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: But when we come back, we're going to discuss another
Speaker 1: pair of individuals who are exceedingly important in the development
Speaker 1: of motion picture technology. We're gonna talk about the Lumier brothers. Alright,
Speaker 1: we're back. So Robert tell me about the Loumier brothers.
Speaker 1: All right, well, uh, just like it sounds, there are
Speaker 1: two of them. They're brothers. There's Auguste Lumier and Louis Loumier. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: August lived eighteen sixty two through nineteen fifty four and
Speaker 1: Louis lived eighteen sixty four through ninety eight. So they
Speaker 1: were the French sons of the painter turned photographer Antoine Lumier. Uh.
Speaker 1: So basically they were both born into the photographic world. Uh.
Speaker 1: And they both had an aptitude for science. At the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen, with his father's help, Louis opened a
Speaker 1: factory for photographic plates and it was quite successful. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, this becomes this is the family
Speaker 1: business at this point. Meanwhile, their father, Um, he attends
Speaker 1: a showing of Edison's kinetoscope in Paris and was really
Speaker 1: impressed by it. So he comes back and he tells
Speaker 1: his sons about it, and they began to work on
Speaker 1: the problem of animating objections projections. Okay, so now remember
Speaker 1: the kinetoscope we were just talking about is a cabinet
Speaker 1: where you have a private experience with a moving picture.
Speaker 1: The cabinet might be at a parlor or business somewhere,
Speaker 1: and you go and you stick your face in it
Speaker 1: and you can watch a fifteen second movie of uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a circus act or a vaudeville show. Right. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's it's like it's like going to a gathering and
Speaker 1: someone is showing something on a like a tiny iPhone screen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know if you get to look at it one
Speaker 1: at a time, right, yeah, that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: so the brothers here they questioned, you know, what else
Speaker 1: was possible? What can we do with projection? So they
Speaker 1: created a camera, uh this cinematography, and that could photograph
Speaker 1: and project project at sixteen frames per second. And it
Speaker 1: had a number of advantages over Edison's invention. It was
Speaker 1: far lighter. Oh yeah, Edison's Now remember the kinematic graph
Speaker 1: the camera they used that was like it was gigantic.
Speaker 1: It was like a thousand pounds or said. This was lighter,
Speaker 1: it was more portable, um and uh. And then when
Speaker 1: you're actually projecting the resulting footage, it moved at a
Speaker 1: slower speed as well, creating a more fluid movement movement.
Speaker 1: It was also far less noisy, because that was another
Speaker 1: thing about Kinetograph is that it was it was noisy.
Speaker 1: Another key improvement, though, is that more than one person
Speaker 1: could watch the film at a time. Seems like a
Speaker 1: big deal. Yeah. To quote Caroline Slade in her two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve Telegraph article about the Brothers, uh quote, the
Speaker 1: Lumier's cinema, cinematography not only created the filmmaker, it created
Speaker 1: the viewer. That's interesting because again there's no I mean,
Speaker 1: when you have when you create media, you created for
Speaker 1: an audience, and when there was previously no wide audience
Speaker 1: for a certain kind of media, you have to make
Speaker 1: that audience somehow. You have to like teach them how
Speaker 1: to receive what you're producing. And kind of like what
Speaker 1: I said earlier, cinema was for the longest time, and
Speaker 1: in large part still is about communal viewing. I mean,
Speaker 1: technology has introduced different waves of private viewing over the years,
Speaker 1: you know, be it uh you know, TV broadcasts or
Speaker 1: VHS tapes, etcetera. Uh, you know, and it's it's impacted
Speaker 1: the medium and the way we engage with it. But
Speaker 1: we still place a high priority on communal viewing. We
Speaker 1: may not like the people that sometimes we have to
Speaker 1: watch a film with if they're like too noisy, or
Speaker 1: they you know, they eat your popcorn too loud. But
Speaker 1: you know, I think by and large, if we want
Speaker 1: to share the viewing experience with someone, yes, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's like the experience of going to a play,
Speaker 1: except of course it's a movie. I mean, being an
Speaker 1: audience is a communal experience, and there is it can
Speaker 1: be moving at times, like when you go see a
Speaker 1: big new movie that's really good and the audience is
Speaker 1: excited about it and they're cheering and they're clapping. That's
Speaker 1: part of the experience too. It's not just like you know,
Speaker 1: you're there with the movie and there happened to be
Speaker 1: other people around you. I mean, all movies today could
Speaker 1: be released directive video. There's no reason that they that
Speaker 1: they couldn't be except that there apparently just is still
Speaker 1: desire for people to go to movie theaters, right. And
Speaker 1: I think about that a lot because I'm often the
Speaker 1: person who's like, I have to wait for this Avengers
Speaker 1: movie to show up on an airplane. Can't I just
Speaker 1: watch it and let it? Now? You know why I
Speaker 1: don't want to go to a theater and spend three
Speaker 1: hours there and and so sometimes if i'm more, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm grumpier about it, I'll think, Oh, it's just the
Speaker 1: nobody actually wants to go to a theater. This is
Speaker 1: just the theater industry. But but no, I think people do.
Speaker 1: I mean, we do want to go see films we
Speaker 1: care about in a theater. There's something about the theater
Speaker 1: experience especially, and at least there's something about the communal
Speaker 1: viewing experience, especially if something is supposed to be funny. Yes,
Speaker 1: that that is huge the laughter or I think actually also, um,
Speaker 1: it's important with horror movies, horror movies that the audience
Speaker 1: plays a role there too, and it might actually have
Speaker 1: to do with laughter. I mean, if if you see
Speaker 1: a horror movie in the theater, you will encounter sometimes
Speaker 1: as much laughter as you do when you're seeing a
Speaker 1: good comedy, either because the horror movie is bad, as
Speaker 1: it often is, and it becomes very funny, or because
Speaker 1: it's very good and there's a constant kind of low
Speaker 1: level nervous release going on whenever tension is alleviated somehow
Speaker 1: in the film. Yeah, Christian and I did an entire
Speaker 1: episode of stuff to blow your mind about that a
Speaker 1: few years back. So you can people can look for
Speaker 1: that at stuff to blow your mind dot com. Uh so,
Speaker 1: let's let's get back to the French brothers here, okay,
Speaker 1: uh and the and essentially they were in the same
Speaker 1: boat as as Edison, like, you create this technology, now
Speaker 1: you've got to create some films. I don't know what.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I just realized I'm picturing both of them
Speaker 1: as the candlestick from Beauty and the beast. That was
Speaker 1: his name, right, was it? Was it Loumier? Okay, well
Speaker 1: that was that must have been their their their reference there, No,
Speaker 1: they were. They both looked more like Cogsworth alright. So
Speaker 1: their initial experiments, for the most part, involved simple captures
Speaker 1: of daily French life, um like. For instance, we look
Speaker 1: at the ten short films that they initially unveiled. They
Speaker 1: were all less than fifty seconds each, and most featured
Speaker 1: scenes such as workers leaving the Lumier factory, which is
Speaker 1: just you see a bunch of frenchmen, uh like, walking
Speaker 1: out of a factory, and it's, you know, given given
Speaker 1: the state of the technology at the time, it's impressive. Right.
Speaker 1: There's also Baby's Breakfast, which is a pair of like
Speaker 1: a mom and a dad, presumably feeding a baby, and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's impressive. But then the crazy thing we talked
Speaker 1: about the importance of comedy. One of the films is
Speaker 1: the Gardener or the Sprinkler Sprinkled, and this is a
Speaker 1: forty nine second film of UH in which a gardener
Speaker 1: is like spraying a garden and then a kid comes
Speaker 1: behind him and stands on the hose, and then the
Speaker 1: gardeners like, what why the water stop? And of course
Speaker 1: he does the comedic thing. He looks at the hose
Speaker 1: like stares down the barrel of the Then the kid
Speaker 1: jumps off the hose and the gardener gets squirted in
Speaker 1: the face. And so that's good. It's really good. But
Speaker 1: it's clearly done for comedic effect. It is, you know,
Speaker 1: it's you could compare it, I guess to like um
Speaker 1: Blooper's show or Candid Camera or you know, later on
Speaker 1: like the Jackass TV shows. You know, it's essentially uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's all about the comedy. It's meant
Speaker 1: to generate laughter. So it's interesting to to to think
Speaker 1: about that, like this is the first crop of tin
Speaker 1: films and they've already touched on UH some sort of
Speaker 1: narrative comedy. A friend of mine in high school I
Speaker 1: actually remember, talked about this short film. He was talking
Speaker 1: about it and he, uh, he said that basically the
Speaker 1: film is mostly the same today, except now it would
Speaker 1: say punked at the end, Yeah, exactly, punked. Um. So
Speaker 1: from you know, from there that, you know, they would
Speaker 1: get into you know, into shorts that were comedic, and
Speaker 1: they would later present the first newsreel and some of
Speaker 1: the first documents rays, uh, these covering the Leon fire Department.
Speaker 1: And by eighteen eighty six they were sending crews out
Speaker 1: to capture footage from around the world and they am
Speaker 1: asked thousands of films. So you know, they were not
Speaker 1: only inventors, but they are also some of our first cinematographers.
Speaker 1: I do think this is interesting. We're seeing with both
Speaker 1: Edison and the Lumire brothers that in the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: again there wasn't yet this division between the technical side
Speaker 1: and the artistic side. They were like fully merged. You know,
Speaker 1: you're you're doing both because if you want to have
Speaker 1: an audience for this thing you invented, you've got to
Speaker 1: create media for it. Nobody else is doing that yet,
Speaker 1: so uh, one thing I wonder is about what that
Speaker 1: divergence looks like over time, Like Wind is making films
Speaker 1: become an art and not something that's associated with the
Speaker 1: technical side of like inventing or maintaining equipment for making films. Well,
Speaker 1: this is something that becomes difficult to nail down, right
Speaker 1: because even like these for first ten films from the Brothers,
Speaker 1: you know, they're not just like Crewe demonstrations of of
Speaker 1: the techno oology, like there is at least some art
Speaker 1: to them. So, um, yeah, definitely in the Sprinkler Sprinkled, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, like if you if you have to, if
Speaker 1: you're asking the question like what is the first film
Speaker 1: that has made like for the joy of filmmaking, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Um, like it's there's a lot a lot
Speaker 1: of joy and the Sprinkler Sprinkled, Well, I just wonder
Speaker 1: there probably is an answer to this that somebody is
Speaker 1: positive before. But who was the first filmmaker who had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with making cameras or anything? Uh, Well,
Speaker 1: that's I think that's a question we'll have to come
Speaker 1: back to now. As for the Loumire brothers, you know,
Speaker 1: they were they were true innovators and they were they
Speaker 1: were ahead of the curve on their invention, and yet
Speaker 1: kind of like Edison was, at least initially, they may
Speaker 1: not have really seen the full potential of what they
Speaker 1: were they were working with. Well, I think they were
Speaker 1: also still limited by their technology to like longer than
Speaker 1: the Edison films, but still shorter than the films that
Speaker 1: would come later. Right, Yeah, they were. They were limited
Speaker 1: by what they could do at the time. But but
Speaker 1: even then they're often quoted as having said, quote, the
Speaker 1: cinema is an invention without any future. Uh. They didn't
Speaker 1: sell their camera to other filmmakers. And now part of
Speaker 1: it too with with both the Lumier brothers and Edison,
Speaker 1: is they weren't like all in on films like Edison,
Speaker 1: had a lot of interests. Uh. And then the Lumiser
Speaker 1: brothers were also important made important in advancements in color photography.
Speaker 1: They had their they had their whole photographic business going.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's not what like they were
Speaker 1: like clinging to this one invention or that they had
Speaker 1: all their eggs in this one basket. So perhaps we can,
Speaker 1: you know, forgive them for not having you know, the
Speaker 1: clearest vision of where this technology was going but as
Speaker 1: we said before, I mean that's the danger of hindsight.
Speaker 1: Like it's easy to look back at this invention and say, well,
Speaker 1: how come on, Lumier brothers, how come you couldn't predict
Speaker 1: the box office success of the Avengers in game based
Speaker 1: on this technology, based on the sprinkler sprinkled Well, I
Speaker 1: would have to think one reason might not yet have
Speaker 1: been able to predict that is that artists hadn't come
Speaker 1: along yet, just pure artists who would take the craft
Speaker 1: of filmmaking to new heights. I mean, one thing you
Speaker 1: have to consider now is that is how crucial editing
Speaker 1: is too good visual storytelling on on film and these
Speaker 1: early things we're seeing, you know, the stuff made by
Speaker 1: the Edison Labs and by the lomi Are brothers. Um.
Speaker 1: I can't recall if the Lomie Air Brothers had used
Speaker 1: editing yet. They may have employed editing, but if they did,
Speaker 1: it was certainly not to the extent that it would
Speaker 1: be employed by filmmakers later to you know, really get
Speaker 1: the best of each angle and the best the best
Speaker 1: performances out of a number of takes, and to put
Speaker 1: things together in time different times in places like That's
Speaker 1: how storytelling really takes off through the visual medium of
Speaker 1: the motion picture, right, I mean, it's really it's almost
Speaker 1: like thinking about the difference between just marveling at the
Speaker 1: wonder of being able to say, capture spoken language in
Speaker 1: written words, and comparing that in that to say, the
Speaker 1: difference between just the wonder of watching footage of a
Speaker 1: horse running versus seeing an actually fully composed motion picture. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's part of it. Like, we're
Speaker 1: still discussing examples of of the of of motion pictures
Speaker 1: that are not truly telling stories yet, and they're certainly
Speaker 1: not manipulating our our our senses and our cognition to
Speaker 1: the level that that films ultimately would manipulate us. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to come back and discuss all that
Speaker 1: in a future episode. That's right, We're not done with
Speaker 1: the motion picture yet, And next time, we got a
Speaker 1: murder mystery for you. That's right, all right. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you want to check out more episodes of Invention,
Speaker 1: head on over to invention pot dot com. That's where
Speaker 1: you'll find them. Uh. And likewise, if you want to
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Speaker 1: sure that you rate and review us and subscribe where
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Speaker 1: get your podcasts, find us, rate us, review us, and subscribe.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to Scott Benjamin for research assistants on this episode,
Speaker 1: and to our excellent audio producer Tori Harrison. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other to just a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, we're just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at invention pod dot com. Invention
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