History of Film

By maxwell.meador

  • The Horse in Motion

    The Horse in Motion
    Created by Eadward Muybridge after making a bet with his friends. A three second long film made up of 12 consecutive photographs, all flashed one after the other. This gave the impression of motion, and inspired the invention of an actual motion camera.

  • The Kinetograph

    The Kinetograph
    The official photographer for the Edison Company, William Kennedy Dickson invented both the kinetograph, the very first motion-film camera. He also invented the kinetoscope, a way to view the film through a peephole, as well as 35 mm celluloid film. This format of film is still very popular today.

  • The Great Train Robbery

    The Great Train Robbery
    Written, directed and produced by Edwin Porter under the Edison Company, The Great Train Robbery is recognized to be the very first real movie, with an observable narrative and an astronomical runtime (for the time, that is). It is also credited to being the very first American action film, and the first Western. Many derivative works were created.

  • Hollywood

    Hollywood
    Before long, Thomas Edison had patented all things movie related, and owned the industry in a monopoly; anyone trying to make their own movie faced despicably brutal legal action. To avoid this, filmmakers started moving west, and settled in Hollywood. By 1912, movie studios were well established, and production began cranking.

  • The Jazz Singer

    The Jazz Singer
    While some films before The Jazz Singer had used sound, the movie's revelatory use of the vitaphone included both important songs, and, more astoundingly, small talk and chatter. Ultimately, this film's use of sound ended the silent film era.

  • The Wizard of Oz

    The Wizard of Oz
    While many film had experimented with color (going back as far as 1901), and several other films had used bicolor Technicolor as well before it, The Wizard of Oz was the first major film to use the tricolor Technicolor method, which made colors realistically pop.

  • This is Cinerama

    This is Cinerama
    With the advent of television, movie sales were steadily declining. In a bid to really wow the movie industry, Fred Waller designed and invented Cinerama, a film method that used 35 mm cameras. With Cinerama, three projectors were used at one time one a curved screen to fulfill a wide screen effect.