19th century in film

See also: 1901 in film, list of 'years in film'.

Events

• 1830s - The Zoetrope is invented. The device was a hollow drum with a strip of pictures around its inner surface. When the drum was spun, the pictures appeared to move.
• 1870s - French inventor Émile Reynaud improved on the Zoetrope idea by placing mirrors at the center of the drum. Some time later, Reynaud developed a projecting version of the Zoetrope, using a reflector and a lens to enlarge the moving images.
• 1878 - Railroad tycoon Leland Stanford hired British photographer Eadweard Muybridge to settle a bet on whether a galloping horse ever had all four of its feet off the ground. Muybridge successfully photographed a horse in fast motion using a series of 12 cameras controlled by trip wires. Muybridge's photos showed the horse with all four feet off the ground. Muybridge went on a lecture tour showing his photographs on a moving-image device he called the zoopraxiscope. Muybridge’s experiments inspired French scientist Étienne-Jules Marey to invent equipment for recording and analyzing animal and human movement. Marey called his invention the chronophotographic camera, which was able to take multiple images superimposed on top of one another.
• 1885 - American inventor George Eastman introduced a sensitized paper roll film to replace the glass plates then in use
• 1888 Thomas Edison meets with Eadweard Muybridge to discuss adding sound to moving pictures.
• 1889 - American inventor George Eastman replaced the paper roll film he had invented with celluloid, a synthetic plastic material coated with a gelatin emulsion
• 1891 - Designed around the work of Muybridge, Marey, and Eastman, Thomas Edison's employee, William K. L. Dickson finishes work on a motion-picture camera, called the Kinetograph, and a viewing machine, called the Kinetoscope. Thomas Edison files for a patent of the Kinetoscope.
• 1892 In France, Émile Reynaud began to have public screenings in Paris at the Theatre Optique, with hundreds of drawings on a reel that he wound through his Zeotrope projector to construct moving images that continued for 15 minutes.
• 1893 Thomas Edison builds a motion-picture studio near his laboratory, dubbed the "Black Maria" by his staff.
• May 9, 1893 - In America, Thomas Edison holds the first public exhibition of films shot using his Kinetograph in the "Black Maria". Unfortunately, only one person at a time could use his viewing machine, the Kinetoscope.
• 1894 - Kinetoscope viewing parlors begin to open in major cities. Each parlor contains several machines.
• 1895 - In France, brothers named Auguste and Louis Lumière, designed and built a lightweight, hand-held motion picture camera called the Cinématographe. The Lumière brothers discovered that their machine could also be used to project images onto a large screen. The Lumière brothers created several short films at this time that are considered to be pivotal in the history of motion pictures.
• November, 1895 - In Germany, Emil and Max Skladanowsky]] develope their own film projector.
• December, 1895 - In France, Auguste and Louis Lumière hold their first public screening of films shot with their Cinématographe.
• January, 1896 - In Britain, Birt Acres and Robert W. Paul developed their own film projector.
• January, 1896 - In the United States, a projector called the Vitascope was designed by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. Armat began working with Thomas Edison to manufacture the Vitascope, which projected motion pictures.
• April, 1896 - Thomas Edison and Thomas Armat's Vitascope is used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City
• 1897 - Thomas Edison's patent for the Kinetoscope is granted.