The Lumière brothers

                                                           Auguste and Louis Lumière

Louis and Auguste Lumière contributed the most to early film history. As both filmmakers and inventors, they made a significant impact on both film and photography. Their careers started at a young age because their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière, was a photographic equipment manufacturer and supplier. They spent a lot of time in their father's shop seeing how the photographic equipment was put together and how it worked. With this background, in 1881 Louis discovered a new dry-plate process. This process greatly contributed to the development of photography and in a way, this discovery also helped them to design the Cinématographe. 

Because of Louis’ success with the new dry-plate process, the brothers were invited to a demonstration of Thomas Edison's new Peephole Kinetoscope in Paris, France. Once they returned home, they began thinking of ways to make this invention even better. They first began by identifying the problems of the Kinetoscope and then began working on ways to fix these problems. The main issues they found were that it was way too big and bulky and that only one person could view it at a time. So, in 1895, the Cinématographe was developed. It was both lightweight and able to be viewed by more than one person. 

The Cinématographe was the world's first motion picture camera that could be viewed by more than one person at a time. This was possible because it worked as a projector. After only months of this product being unveiled, it was being used all across Europe and North America. Both of the brothers were extremely smart and had a deep understanding of the technology behind how the film process worked, but so were many other filmmakers and inventors, such as Thomas Edison, William Dickson, Edwin Porter, and many more people who contributed. However, the Lumière brothers stand out because not only did they invent the Cinématographe, but they were also filmmakers themselves. They enjoyed capturing real people and real events. They also patented film perforations, which advanced film through the projector and by the 1890s, Lumiére and Sons was the second leading photographic company in the world, second to Eastman Kodak. In 1896, they created more than 40 films that significantly influenced pop culture, including the documentation of common French life, comedy shorts, the first newsreel, and the first documentaries. In addition to their films, they also trained a team of cameramen to travel around the world to show their films and capture new material. They opened Cinématographe theaters in London, Brussels, Belgium and New York and their film catalogs continued to grow, reaching over 2,000 films in the 1900s. 

They had all of these amazing accomplishments in film even though they believed “the cinema is an invention without any future”. Because of this, they decided to switch their focus back on photography. By 1907, they produced the first color photography process which is known as Autochrome Lumiere. 

Although the Lumière brothers were not alone in developing new things for film, they contributed so much and who knows how things would look without them. They worked their whole lives creating different films and products to support them. With their understanding of how everything worked they were able to help the film industry, the photography industry, and they even made advances in the medical field with Auguste doing research and studies on tuberculosis and cancer. They now have a museum in Lyon, France, showing off all of their accomplishments during their lives. 

“Auguste Lumière & Louis Lumière.” International Photography Hall of Fame, 16 Aug. 2019, https://iphf.org/inductees/auguste-louis-lumiere/.

Pruitt, Sarah. “The Lumière Brothers, Pioneers of Cinema.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 3 Oct. 2014, https://www.history.com/news/the-lumiere-brothers-pioneers-of-cinema.