December 28: Give us the nice bright colors

On December 28, 1895 the Lumiere Brothers held the first public movie screening in the basement of a café in Paris. It was the birth of the cinema. Their father ran a photography shop in Lyon. The story goes that their father saw Edison’s Kinestoscope in Paris (where you had to look into a peephole to see the picture) and suggested to his sons that they could improve this by moving the “image out of the box.” They did, and in 1895, the first movie show was held.

The first showing was of 10 movies, each about 40 seconds in length. You can see all of them at the Lumiere Institute’s web site: http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english/frames_lum.html The first was Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory; look at the guy with the handkerchief about 33 seconds in: what is he doing?. The second is really funny, named the “The Vaulting.” These films are in black and white.

 

The Lumiere brothers also invented the Autochrome, a new process for creating color photographs. This was a huge improvement over previous methods, and was the primary method used between 1907 and the 1930’s. The Albert Kahn Museum in Paris has a collection of 72,000 Autochrome photographs, the largest in the world.

The history of the invention and some pictures can be seen at http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english/frames_lum.html

 

Anyway, the café where the first movie screening took place was called the Salon Indien du Grand Café, located at 14 Boulevard Des Capucines in Paris.

On this same date, December 28, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen published a paper on a new form of radiation (x-rays). It turns out he conducted experiments at the very same café.

 

Today, the site of the café is occupied by the Hotel Scribe, a 5* Sofitel property. One of its restaurants is called Le Lumiere:

http://www.sofitel.com/gb/hotel-0663-hotel-scribe-paris-managed-by-sofitel/index.shtml#./restaurant.shtml and you can see a picture of the Lumiere brothers over the fireplace.

 

Sort of related tidbits:

-- at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, in 1874, was the first impressionist exhibition, including work by Renoir, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, and Monet.

--- Monet painted two pictures called Boulevard Des Capucines; one is in Moscow, the other in Kansas City.

---Capucine is also the name of an actress; you will recognize her from The Pick Panther and What’s New Pussycat:

Capucine_The_Pink_Panther.jpg