1888

The invention of celluloid

The American John Carbutt invents a flexible and transparent support, cellulose nitrate, celluloid, in bands of 70 mm wide, marketed by the industrialist George Eastman.

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1891
Thomas Edison and the first steps of cinema
The American Thomas Edison, assisted by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and William Heise, designed the 35 mm film with vertical scrolling, with 2 sets of 4 rectangular perforations per photogram, as we still know it today. The two men developed the Kinetographer, a camera, and the Kinetoscope, an individual viewing device. They record the first films of the cinema and can show them in motion to the public.

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1892
The first cartoon
The Frenchman Émile Reynaud conceived the first cartoon of the cinema, which he drew directly on a flexible perforated strip and undertook, using a machine of his design, the Théâtre optique, the first public projections of moving images on a large screen. He commissioned the first original music specially composed for a film.

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1895
The cinematograph of the Lumière brothers
The Lyonnais Louis and Auguste Lumière, better known under the name "Lumière brothers", synthesizing the discoveries of their predecessors, conceive the cinematograph, a camera capable of recording moving photographic images on a film and rendering them in projection. They are organizing the first publicly funded screenings of moving photographic images on the big screen, or at least those that will have the greatest worldwide impact, because before them, other screenings of the same type took place, in Berlin (Max Skladanowsky and his brother Eugen, with their Bioskop) and in New York (Woodville Latham with his Eidoloscope).

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December 28, 1895
Public Screening of the Cinematographer
The cinematograph, the invention of the brothers Louis and Auguste Lumière, is presented to the public during a paid screening at the Indian Salon, in the basement of the Grand Café, in Paris. 33 spectators are present in the room to witness the broadcast of a dozen short films including "La sortie des usines Lumière", "L'Arroseur arrosé" and "Entrée en gare du train de la Ciotat". They paid 1.02 francs to be able to participate in this unique show.

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May 15, 1902

The first film show

7 years after the "invention" of cinema, the French director Georges Méliès presents his "Voyage dans la Lune". To make this first 14-minute fiction film, Méliès used a 3-shot montage effect. Greatly inspired by Jules Vernes and H. G. Wells, it features a group of astronomers propelled to the Moon in a sort of giant cannonball. After a perilous lunar journey, during which they cross the path of the hostile Selenites, they manage to return to Earth. Through formidable special effects and special effects, Georges Méliès achieves what will be considered one of the very first science fiction films. The public will make a triumph with this work which will open the way to the great cinematographic spectacle. 20 years later, ruined and forgotten, the brilliant designer will end his life by selling flowers at the Gare Montparnasse. 

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1905
Appearance of Nickelodeons in Pittsburgh
A nickelodeon was a type of small neighbourhood cinema from the early 20th century in North America. The name comes from the American "nickel" and the Greek "odéon" which respectively designate the 5-cent coin (the one that spectators had to slip into a turnstile to access the room) and a building for music.
The Nickelodeons included a piano or organ for a musician to accompany the projected mute sequences appropriately.

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August 6, 1926
The Warners present the vitaphone
The Warner brothers present in New York "Don Juan" by Alan Crosland, a film using the vitaphone, a process of sound restitution with synchronization by disc. The Warner brothers, who bought Vitaphone, have just created Warner Bross, a company specializing in record production and distribution. The following year, they will present "The Jazz Singer" by Alan Crosman, the first film entirely sound and singing.

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October 6, 1927
The Jazz Singer: the first sound film
Alan Crosland’s The Jazz singer, the first talking, singing and musical film, is released in the United States. The star actor, Al Jolson, of Russian origin, appears disguised in black. The soundtrack has only 354 words, but the success is immediate for the producers, the Warner brothers.

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October 31, 1929
The advent of talking cinema in France
The first film about the history of French cinema is released in Paris. "Les trois masques", with Marcel Vibert and Renée Heribel, is the work of director André Hugon. It was shot in London in two weeks.

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1932

The first color film

After various color film processes launched by the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation in 1914, Herbert Kalmus perfected in 1932 the camera which made it possible to film in full color: the Technicolor trichrome camera. It handles three black and white negatives at a time, driven in perfect synchronism, one sensitive to red, the other to green and the last to blue. This process required a lot of care in the final print, so that the three images overlapped exactly on the copy. The studios, scalded by the mixed successes and especially the imperfect quality of the previous processes, are cautious. It is to Walt Disney that Kalmus will therefore offer his invention; Disney had not shown interest in the previous two-color processes, but he has a hunch that the new version will really exceed in quality anything that has been done before. The first film using Trichrome Technicolor will therefore be an animated film, "Trees and Flowers" (1932), from the Silly Symphonies, an experimental laboratory for the future first feature film by Walt Disney, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). In addition, Disney signed with Kalmus for a five-year exclusivity, which gave it a leg up over the competition in the technique that immediately thrilled crowds. However, in the face of growing pressure from other studios who wanted to have their share of success, the duration of this exclusivity was reduced to one year.  

 

1952

3D cinema (3D system)

During the 1950s, in the United States, to bring back to theaters an audience who now stayed at home to watch TV, the film industry offered films in relief (polarized light). Several techniques have been used for the relief projection of film on film. Two standard cameras (monoscopic) have long been used coupled side by side with a distance between the two objectives close to that of our two eyes (stereoscopic basis). Indoors, two projectors, also coupled and synchronized, send the two images of the stereoscopic pair onto the same screen surface. The implementation of this device is not easy, but it has the advantage of using standard and therefore already existing hardware. In the 1950s, on an idea to position, in post-production, the two images from two cameras on a single film (single-band system). The two images of the couple are placed side by side or one above the other. In front of the lens of the single projector on site an optical prism and / or mirror instrument to superimpose the two images on the screen. Desynchronization becomes impossible. 

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On December 4, 1953
The first film in cinemascope
Henri Koster’s film "La tunique" ("The robe") was the first to be made in cinemascope. The studios of the XX Century Fox are at the origin of this change in format that aims to revive the cinema economy. Cinemascopes will soon be available in cinemascopes all over the world.
The Cinemascope is a process of shooting and projection which consists in anamorphosing (compressing) the image to the shooting, for the de-namorphoser to the projection. Thanks to a deforming lens (anamorphosis), the image is compressed in the horizontal direction when shooting on classic film; at the projection, it is stretched in the same proportions, which allows to find a panoramic image.

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1972
Dolby system arrives in the cinemas
In 1965, the American technician Ray Dolby created his company specialized in reducing background noise and encoding and audio compression AC-3.
In 1966, he launched the first professional noise reduction device, the Dolby NR-A2. This system is reserved for professional music studios before being extended and adapted for screening in cinemas, in 1972.
In 1976, he applied his system to the cinema with the Dolby stereo. Star Wars", by George Lucas, and "Apocalypse Now", by Francis Ford Coppola, will be the first films to use it. 

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2005

Digital cinema

Digital cinema refers to the production and distribution of cinematographic works from a professional digital format standardized and secured by international ISO standards. Feature films can be distributed on physical media (hard drive) or by satellite and telecommunications networks (they replace 35mm silver film). Until 2005, an extremely small number of cinemas were equipped with digital projectors. From 2006, due to the establishment in the United States of mechanisms to help cinemas to make this investment, the commercial take-off of this technology occurs, across the Atlantic, then in other countries, in Europe and in Asia. especially. At the end of 2009, the worldwide success of James Cameron's film "Avatar", acclaimed in its 3D version, overcame the last reluctance and caused a sharp acceleration in investments by cinemas to equip themselves.

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2009

The "trivialization" of 3D

Since the invention of photography in 1839, techniques of relief shooting have been developed and  stereoscopes have been created to observe them. Despite some attempts throughout the history of cinema with, notably, the 3 episode of "Jaws" in the 1980s, it will be necessary to wait for the 21st century and the blockbuster "Avatar" to mark the almost systematic start of the use of 3D in the capture and projection of major world film productions.