The History of Film and Cinema

The interesting thing about cinema was that it was not invented by a single person. The first device to show moving pictures was by William Kennedy Luarie Dickson, Thomas Edisons employee at the time. The device was called Edison Kinetoscope and it worked by looking through an eyepiece at the top of the machine, which would then show the film that ran for about 20 seconds in a loop. On December 28th, 1895 in Paris France, the first showing of a moving picture to a paying audience was by the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis. They invented a device called the Cinematographe, which was a camera, projector and film printer in one. The device was demonstrated at a scientific meeting.

Later silent films followed creating an era of storytelling. Future films such as "A Trip to the Moon" (1902), "The Birth of a Nation" (1915), "The Jazz Singer" (1927) revolutionized the film industry once again, and opened new horizons for storytellling. By the early 1930s, practically all feature-length films had synchronized sound, and by the mid-1930s, some had full color as well. The introduction of sound guaranteed the American industry's dominance and gave rise to the so-called "Golden Age of Hollywood."

Specialist 70mm film-based large-screen systems were also created. The most successful of these has been IMAX, which has over 1,500 screens worldwide as of 2020. For many years, IMAX cinemas screened films developed specifically for its unique 2D or 3D formats, but more recently, they screened popular mainstream feature films that had been digitally re-mastered in the IMAX format, frequently with new scenes or 3D effects.