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Speaker 1: Hey, history fans, if you want a double dose of history,

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Speaker 1: here's a rerun for today, brought to you by Tracy V. Wilson.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to this Day in History Class from how Stuff

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Speaker 1: Works dot Com and from the desk of Stuff you

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Speaker 1: missed in History Class. It's the show where we explore

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Speaker 1: the past one day at a time with a quick

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Speaker 1: look at what happened today in history. Hello, I'm Holly

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Speaker 1: Fry and I am sitting in this week for Tracy V. Wilson.

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Speaker 1: It's December, and today we are talking about an event

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Speaker 1: that happened in eight which is the first paid public

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Speaker 1: screening of Loumier Brothers films. Auguste and Louis Lumier were

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Speaker 1: brothers born two years apart in eighteen sixty two in

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixty four, and they were prolific inventors. Their legacy

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Speaker 1: is most closely tied to early film history, although they

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Speaker 1: worked in a number of mediums. The Lumiers, who lived

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Speaker 1: in Lyon, France, worked in the family photography business, and

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Speaker 1: in the early eighteen eighties, at the age of just seventeen,

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Speaker 1: Louis invented a photographic plate. It's called a blue label

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Speaker 1: plate or a dry plate, and that plate reduced the

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Speaker 1: need for dark room development of images. That plate also

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Speaker 1: drove a massive expansion of the family business. It made

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Speaker 1: the Lumier's quite wealthy, and it made the name Lumier

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Speaker 1: synonymous with photography. Their father, Antoine, who was still running

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Speaker 1: the family business, wisely set aside a portion of the

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Speaker 1: company's profit to fund ongoing research and experimentation. So later,

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Speaker 1: when Antoine saw one of Thomas Edison's kinetoscope machines in

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Speaker 1: Paris in the mid eight nineties, he immediately talked to

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Speaker 1: his son's about developing a process to make the film

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Speaker 1: that was used in the kinetoscope, because Antoine thought that

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Speaker 1: they could once again make a huge profit for the

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Speaker 1: family business if they became the suppliers of film in France.

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Speaker 1: But to figure out how to make that film with

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Speaker 1: the holes punched in the sign that was run through

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Speaker 1: a kinetoscope, the Loomier brothers also had to figure out

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Speaker 1: how to make a camera, and that proved something of

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Speaker 1: a difficult task. But eventually it was thinking about a

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Speaker 1: sewing machine that gave Louis the inspiration he needed to

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Speaker 1: solve their main problem, and that was getting the film

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Speaker 1: to advance So by mimicking the mechanations of a sewing machine,

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Speaker 1: he was able to alter a camera, and with that

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Speaker 1: problem solved, the brother's next turned to figuring out how

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Speaker 1: to print film from negatives, and then how to show

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Speaker 1: those prints to people, and they opted to go counter

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Speaker 1: to the kinetoscope, which was viewable only by one person

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Speaker 1: at a time. Louis wanted an audience, and so he

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Speaker 1: developed the idea of film projection. Now all of those

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Speaker 1: functions that Louis Lumier invented and his brother also worked

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Speaker 1: on the film advancement processing, a film, and projection were

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Speaker 1: all integrated into one machine that they called a cinematograph,

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Speaker 1: for which the brothers first filed a patent on February.

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Speaker 1: A little over a month later, on Arch nineteenth of

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Speaker 1: eighteen ninety five, the Lumiers began making short films with

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Speaker 1: their invention, and by short, I mean really short. They

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Speaker 1: tended to run about fifty seconds each, so not even

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Speaker 1: a minute. The first film they made, Las Sortie des

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Speaker 1: Euxine's Lumier but Workers Leaving the Loumier factory, was simply

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Speaker 1: a capture of their employees leaving their work at the

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Speaker 1: end of the work day, and the Lumier films generally

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Speaker 1: were not narrative in nature, just as that first film,

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Speaker 1: they almost always were just moments out of real life

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Speaker 1: captured on film documentary style. At the end of the year,

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Speaker 1: on December, at the Salon Indienne Dublin Cafe in Paris,

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Speaker 1: Auguste and Louis screened their films for a paying audience

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Speaker 1: for the first time. They ran ten films, so it

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Speaker 1: sounds a little like a film festival, but it was

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Speaker 1: still very short, because each of those films ran about

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Speaker 1: fifty seconds. This is the first known instance of films

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Speaker 1: being shown to a paying audience. There were thirty four

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Speaker 1: people in the crown and each of them had paid

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Speaker 1: one franc The Lumier's most famous film, though, was not

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Speaker 1: made until after this presentation. One of their films which

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Speaker 1: gained a lot of attention early on, was The Arrival

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Speaker 1: of a Train at Ciota Station. This particular film features,

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Speaker 1: as the title suggests, a train pulling into a station,

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Speaker 1: and from the perspective of the viewer, that train is

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Speaker 1: coming down the tracks right toward them. The initial audience

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Speaker 1: reaction to this film is one of those items in

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Speaker 1: history that's a matter of some debate. Some accounts claim

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Speaker 1: that the audience was terrified by the experience, and they

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Speaker 1: screamed and even fled, but other accounts indicate that there

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Speaker 1: was really a more subdued reaction. The panicked reaction version,

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Speaker 1: of course, has gained some traction over the years just

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Speaker 1: by virtue of being a juicier story. The Lumier's briefly

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Speaker 1: started a business making and distributing films, but they eventually

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Speaker 1: moved on from moving pictures to other endeavors, including developing

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Speaker 1: an early system for color photography, while men like George

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Speaker 1: Millies took film and ran with it. If you'd like

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Speaker 1: to learn more about the Lumier brothers, Good News Stuff

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Speaker 1: You Missed in History Class has a two parter on them,

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Speaker 1: which originally aired in November of I want to thank

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Speaker 1: Casey Pegram and Chandler Mains for their work on the

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Speaker 1: audio for this podcast, and if you would like to,

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Speaker 1: and you should, you can subscribe to This Day in

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Speaker 1: History Class on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app,

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Speaker 1: and anywhere you get podcasts. Tomorrow's topic turns from entertainment, unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: to a more serious and tragic event that actually took

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Speaker 1: place five years before the Lumier's first paid film presentation,