Sandro Machetti

1888 ROUNDHAY GARDEN SCENE From 14 October, by Louis A. A. Le Prince. It's not the oldest ‘moving pictures’ we have, but it was on film. Paper film. Le Prince missed out on the new Kodak celluloid film by 10 months which was made public for commercial use in August 1889. Le Prince also photographed ‘Man Walking Around a Corner,’ believed to be prior to this in 1887 on glass. We also have documentation from eye witnesses that Le Prince filmed in 1886, in New York. Photographic copies of ‘Roundhay Garden Scene’ on paper have been preserved since 1930 by The National Science and Media Museum (NMPFT back then).

THE BIG SWALLOW (1901) James Williamson (1855–1933) goes a step further than George Albert Smith's close-up in Grandma's Reading Glass (1901) by having a man come so close to the camera, he swallows it and the cameraman. This photographic contortion was filmed in Brighton UK with British actor-comedian Sam Dalton. Its US release was called ‘The Big Swallow.’ Runs 1:00

4/4 This video from Museu del Cinema shows a coin-operated Musical Praxinoscope made by E. Hartmann-Bahon in or close to 1895. -30-

8/8 Promenade Productions @prompromltd presents perhaps one of, perhaps the only, Raree Show still on earth today called The Raree Man Peep Show. Here is a cute little video that gives you a pretty good idea what the Raree Show was all about produced by Steve Sowden showing as they say, “the last peep show on earth.” Runs 3:55 -30-

Regular followers of @ReaPreCinema may recall my dispatch of the Galantee So during the same time period. So, what’s the difference you ask? The history of pre cinema, bestowing on us many apparatuses, has all bases covered as it pertains to carrying something on your back. The Galantee So and Raree Show were close brothers.

1893 THE CINÉBIBLIOGRAPHE LÉON BOULY (1872-1932) Bouly was a French inventor best known for creating the term Cinématographe and developing an early motion picture device of the same name. Born in Paris, Bouly worked in the field of Chronophotography, a precursor to cinema that captured sequences of images to study motion. On February 12, 1892, he patented a device called the "Cynématographe Léon Bouly,"described as a "reversible device of photography and optics for the analysis and synthesis of motions." First Christened with the name Cinébibliographe, it was a tall vertical hand-cranked camera that employed the same mechanism as the Cinématographe which Bouly had developed in 1893, before the Lumières seized the name following his patent lapse. This apparatus was designed to record a series of images automatically and without interruption, using non-perforated film driven by a segmental roller and stopped intermittently by a pressure pad. On 27 December 1893, Bouly refined the name to Cinématographe and updated the patent to include projection capabilities, making the device theoretically capable of both filming and projecting moving images.

The lantern below is called the English Dissolver. It was a biunial Dissolving View lantern with a toothed blade spanning both lenses. This image is taken from Alfred Molteni's 4th edition of ‘Practical Instructions on The Use of Projection Devices’ 1884, Chapter XI on pp162, 168. The toothed blade on the English Dissolver passes slowly in front of one of the lenses to mask it while the second blade uncovers the other lens creating a smooth animated transition.

1840's DISSOLVING VIEWS HENRY LANGDON CHILDE (1781-1874) Dissolving Views were introduced by Henry Childe at the Royal Polytechnic Institution, London. Childe attempted his Dissolving Views by placing different sources of light behind various painted glass plates. By diminishing the light as one scene was changed to the other, Childe was able to project an animated transition. Traditionally a unial lantern, the Magic Lantern became biunial and then triunial as a result of the dissolving view. This allowed the dissolving of one slide into another.