Pioneers of media

Lumiere Brothers The Lumiere Brothers were born in france in 1862 and 1864 and

moved to lyon in france in 1870 where both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him.

Their work consisted mainly of moving images from scenes of everyday life. Ironically as we look back in retrospect in comparison to what film has developed into today, the Lumiere Brothers believed it to be a medium without a future as they suspected that people would bore of images that they could just as easily see by walking out into the street. However, their film sequence of a train pulling into the station reportedly had audiences screaming and ducking for cover as they believed that the train itself was about to plow into the theater.

The Lumiere Brothers have been credited with over 1,425 different short films and had even filmed aerial shots years before the very first aiplane would take to the skies

Joseph Plateau Born: 14 Oct 1801 in Brussels, BelgiumDied: 15 Sept 1883 in Ghent, Belgium

He was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistoscope.

his mathematical research into the intersections of revolving curves (locus), the observation of the distortion of moving images, and the reconstruction of distorted images through counter revolving discs (he dubbed these anorthoscopic discs).[8] In 1832, Plateau invented an early stroboscopic device, the "phenakistoscope", the first device to give the illusion of a moving image. It consisted of two disks, one with small equidistant radial windows, through which the viewer could look, and another containing a sequence of images. When the two disks rotated at the correct speed, the synchronization of the windows and the images created an animated effect. The projection of stroboscopic photographs, creating the illusion of motion, eventually led to the development of cinema.[9]

Charles-Émile Reynaud Charles-Émile Reynaud (8 December 1844 – 9 January 1918) was a French science

teacher, responsible for the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888, and on 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris. This film is also notable as the first known instance of film

perforations being used.

Ryanaud died in a hospice on the banks of the Seine where he had been cared for since 29 March 1917. His late years were tragic from 1910 when, crushed by the new Cinematograph, dejected and penniless, he threw the greater part of his irreplaceable work and unique equipment into the Seine as the public had deserted his "Théatre Optique" shows which had been a celebrated attraction at the Musée Grevin between 1892 and 1900.

William Horner The modern zoetrope was invented in 1834 by British mathematician

William George Horner. He called it the "Daedalum," popularly translated as "the wheel of the devil”

It failed to become popular until the 1860s, when it was patented by makers in both England and America, in the latter country one of whom was Milton Bradley. The American developer, William F. Lincoln, named his toy the 'zoetrope', which means 'wheel of life.'