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Film Speeds Up- In 1888, the Eastman company Invented a flexible film base on a roll Wilhln two years. it
became possible to take up to 40 photographs a second.Sharp-witted showmen soon became Interested,
sensing the possi~lity of making money out of the new invention. The public was round to be very Willing to put
coins into peepshow machines. These wortted like e flicker-book. showing photographs at fast enough speeds
to Cfeate the illusion of movement. These 'movies· lasted less than a minute, and were watched by only one
person at a time.

Business was good, but many people saw that it would be even better if film could be projected for a large
audience. The race was on.
THE FIRST FILMS - It was this race to combine projection and photography which led up to the 1895 Paris film
show. The winners were the Lumiere brothers. Louis and Auguste. Worttlng In their father's photographic
factory, they devised a machine which could both expose film and project II. This machine, made of mahogany
and brass. wa.s celled the Lumiere Cinematograph&.

Wrthin two weeks of the Lumieres' first public SCfeenlng. scientists and showmen In other countries had also
found a way of combining film and projection As a result. the 'movies' spread right aCfOSS Europe and the
United States within a year.

The First Documentaries - AI first. the only type of films on offer to audiences were what we now call
documentaries. They were made by setting up the very heavy and immo~le camera In a particular place,
and filming what was going on. As a result, a typical Lumiere film-show at the end of the century consisted
of a collection of short items such as The Baby's First Lesson In Walking, The Fish Marttet at Marseilles, A
Sack Race between Workers at the Lumlere Factory, and German Dragoons leaping the Hurdles. To add to
the enjoyment, this last item was shown backwards as well as forwards.
Sometimes these films were livened up by having the camera fiXed to the top of a train, for example, but it
was some years before any-one tried out a totally different approach to film-making.

Melies-Fllm Magician - The most successful of the earty non-documentary film-makers was Georges
Melles. A magician before becoming a film-maker, Melies was naturally interested In film's ability to Irick an
audience. He designed and built the world's first film studio and In 18 years made over 1000 films. Some of
them were short Irick films. such as The Man with the Rubber Head. in which Me lies himself plays an
eccenlric scienlist who blows up his own head like a balloon, till it finally explodes.
He also made some ~minute science fiction fantasies, based on the novels of Jules Verne. Of these. the
most successful was A Trip to the Moon.

BIGGER and BETTER - Having found Its feet In the last years of the nineteenth century. film set out to
conquer the world in the twentieth. Because films were silent, they could be understood everywhere - not
just in Europe and America.

During Worid War One (1914-1918), fllm production in Europe was Interrupted. In America, however. it
carried on. By 1920, Hollywood had become the film capital of the worid. Many changes came to film and
film-equlpmem. Audiences had grown tired of short, silent. black-and-white films and wanted something
bigger and better for their money. Studios started to make feature-length films (that Is, fllms lasting one
hour or more).

The 'Talkies' It had been possible to record sound for over thirty years before it was successfully joined up
with film. Two problems had first to be solved: how to make the actors' speech (the dialogue) satisfactorily
match the1r lip movemenls, and how to make the sound loud enoug.h for a large auditorium.
The West em Electric Company produced a solution In 1926. warner Brothers bought the equipmenl and
made The Jazz Singer, In which the star, AI Jolson, had plenty of songs and a few lines of dialogue. Audi-
ences responded with enthusiasm, and producers competed to bring out the first all-talking film. The result
of the coming of sound was that audiences In the USA rose from 57 million a week In 1926 to 110 million in
1930.

Glorious Technicolorl - Colour film, like sound. was possible for many years before the Technlcolor sys-
tem became generally accepted. The first Technicolor fllms used only two colours. red and green. The
best-known of these films is The Black Pirate, made in 1926 by Douglas Fairbanks. The Technicolor film
chemists pressed on. and In six years they had worked out a way of adding blue.