October 19 - Auguste Lumière

Filmmaker and inventor Auguste Lumière was born on October 19, 1862, in Besançon, France, near Switzerland. He and his younger brother Louis lived in Lyon, France, where they became the world’s earliest motion picture filmmakers. Antoine manufactured photographic equipment, which Louis improved upon (at age 17) with a “dry plate” process. In 1894 their father saw Edison’s bulky Peephole Kinetoscope (built for a single viewer) in Paris and charged his sons with improving on the phenomenon. By 1895, the brothers had invented their smaller, lightweight Cinématographe, combining a hand-cranked camera with a printer and projector. On March 22, 1895, they held a private screening of a full-fledged motion picture, known by its eponymous title, “Workers leaving the Lumière factory.” History’s first-ever public screening of motion pictures, consisting of 10 short films (each lasting less than 50 seconds), occurred on December 28 at the Grand Café in Paris. They were called actualités (documentaries). In 1896 the Lumières opened movie theaters that became known as cinemas.