George Albert Smith's studio at St. Ann's Well, Hove, Sussex.
Note the rails in the foreground, for moving the studio to catch the sunlight.
The History of the British Film 1896-1906, Low and Manvell (George Allen & Unwin 1948)

 
The first film pioneers in Britain were those who tried to obtain sequence photographs on strips of paper and celluloid film, immediately after its introduction. These included Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince, a Frenchman living in Leeds who made a 16-lens camera of unusual design, and then a one-lens camera for paper film, with which he shot sequences of Leeds Bridge, his son playing the melodion, and the family in their garden, in 1888. He failed to succesfully project his sequences, and disappeared while on a train from Dijon to Paris, in September 1890 - a great mystery of the early days of motion pictures.

Photographer William Friese-Greene (right) experimented with moving magic lantern pictures with his associate J.A.R.Rudge, before devising or using - with associates Mortimer Evans (in 1889), and Frederick Varley (in 1890) cameras for sequence photographs on paper and celluloid film. Like the other visionaries of the period, he failed to project his motion pictures. A romanticised verson of his story was filmed as The Magic Box (1951)

click on picture

 
Wordsworth Donisthorpe (left) and W.C. Crofts were political activists. Donisthorpe, inspired by the mechanisms of his father"s wool-combing inventions, made a sequence camera for plates in 1876, and with Crofts patented an ingenious film camera (1889) with which they filmed Trafalgar square, London, probably in 1890. They also failed to make their projector work.

Following eventual technical success, those who entered the commercial industry early on included the American entrepreneur Charles Urban who had experience of kinetoscopes, and was instrumental in the development of the Bioscope projector. He came to London in 1897 and became manager of the Warwick Trading Company, elevating the company to a foremost position in Bristish film production and distribution. In 1903 he left to form the Charles Urban Trading Company, which became the major UK firm in non-fiction film production. Urban financed the development of Kinemacolor, with which he had considerable success before legislation from Friese-Greene's system company brought his downfall.

Continue your tour through
TECHNICAL DEVELOPMENT

Back to The Projection Box