Auguste and Louis Lumière

The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon, France, to Charles-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911)[3] and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small photographic portrait studio where Auguste and Louis were born. They moved to Lyon in 1870, where son Edouard and three daughters were born. Auguste and Louis both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon.[4] Their father Charles-Antoine set up a small factory producing photographic plates, but even with Louis and a young sister working from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. it teetered on the verge of bankruptcy, and by 1882 it looked as if they would fail, but when Auguste returned from military service the boys designed the machines necessary to automate their father's plate production and devised a very successful new photo plate, 'etiquettes bleue', and by 1884 the factory employed a dozen workers.

Cinématographe Lumière at the Institut Lumière, France

They patented several significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Emile Reynaud) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The original cinématographe had been patented by Léon Guillaume Bouly on 12 February 1892.[5] The cinématographe — a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures — was further developed by the Lumières.[6] The brothers patented their own version on 13 February 1895.[7]

The date of the recording of their first film is in dispute. In an interview with Georges Sadoul given in 1948, Louis Lumière tells that he shot the film in August 1894. This is questioned by historians (Sadoul, Pinel, Chardère) who consider that a functional Lumière camera didn't exist before the end of 1894, and that their first film La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon was recorded on 19 March 1895, and then publicly projected 22 March 1895 at the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale in Paris.

The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn from the film business by 1905. They went on to develop the first practical photographic colour process, the Lumière Autochrome.

Tomb of the Lumière brothers in the New Guillotière Cemetery in Lyon

Louis died on 6 June 1948 and Auguste on 10 April 1954. They are buried in a family tomb in the New Guillotière Cemetery in Lyon.

The Lumières presented their invention with a screening on 22 March 1895 in Paris, at the "Society for the Development of the National Industry", in front of an audience of 200 people, one of whom was Léon Gaumont, then director of the company the Comptoir géneral de la photographie. The main focus of the conference by Louis Lumière concerned the recent developments in the photograph industry, mainly the research on polychromy (colour photography). It was much to Lumière's surprise that the moving black-and-white images retained more attention than the coloured stills.[8] The American Woodville Latham screened works of film 2 months later on 20 May 1895.[9] The first public screening of films at which admission was charged was a program by the Skladanowsky brothers that was held on 1 November 1895 in Berlin.[10]

The Lumières gave their first paid public screening on 28 December 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris.[11] This history-making presentation consisted of the following 10 short films (in order of presentation):[12][13]

1. La Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (literally, "the exit from the Lumière factory in Lyon", or, under its more common English title, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory), 46 seconds
2. Le Jardinier (l'Arroseur Arrosé) ("The Gardener", or "The Sprinkler Sprinkled"), 49 seconds
3. Le Débarquement du congrès de photographie à Lyon ("the disembarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon"), 48 seconds
4. La Voltige ("Horse Trick Riders"), 46 seconds
5. La Pêche aux poissons rouges ("fishing for goldfish"), 42 seconds
6. Les Forgerons ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds
7. Repas de bébé ("Baby's Breakfast" (lit. "baby's meal")), 41 seconds
8. Le Saut à la couverture ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds
9. La Places des Cordeliers à Lyon ("Cordeliers Square in Lyon"—a street scene), 44 seconds
10. La Mer (Baignade en mer) ("the sea [bathing in the sea]"), 38 seconds

Lumières La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon 1895

Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.

Cinématographe advertising poster with image from L'Arroseur arrosé

The Lumières went on tour with the cinématographe in 1896, visiting Brussels (the first place a film was played outside Paris on the Galleries Saint-Hubert on 1 March 1896), Bombay, London, Montreal, New York City, Palestine, and Buenos Aires.

In 1896, only a few months after the initial screenings in Europe, films by the Lumiere Brothers were shown in Egypt, first in the Tousson stock exchange in Alexandria on 5 November 1896 and then in the Hamam Schneider (Schneider Bath) in Cairo.[14][15]

Louis Lumiere

The moving images had an immediate and significant influence on popular culture with L'Arrivée d'un Train en Gare de la Ciotat (literally, "the arrival of a train at La Ciotat", but more commonly known as Arrival of a Train at a Station) and Carmaux, défournage du coke (Drawing out the coke). Their actuality films, or actualités, are often cited as the first, primitive documentaries. They also made the first steps towards comedy film with the slapstick of L'Arroseur Arrosé.

Autochrome colour picture by Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud of North-African soldiers, Oise, France, 1917.

The brothers stated that "the cinema is an invention without any future" and declined to sell their camera to other filmmakers such as Georges Méliès. This made many film makers upset. Consequently, their role in the history of film was exceedingly brief. In parallel with their cinema work they experimented with colour photography. They worked on a number of colour photographic processes in the 1890s including the Lippmann process (interference heliochromy) and their own 'bichromated glue' process,[16] a subtractive colour process, examples of which were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. This last process was commercialised by the Lumieres but commercial success had to wait for their next colour process. In 1903 they patented a colour photographic process, the Autochrome Lumière, which was launched on the market in 1907.[17] Throughout much of the 20th century, the Lumière company was a major producer of photographic products in Europe, but the brand name, Lumière, disappeared from the marketplace following merger with Ilford.[18]

Earlier moving images in for instance phantasmagoria shows, the phénakisticope, the zoetrope and Émile Reynaud's Théâtre Optique consisted of hand-drawn images. Despite many obvious similarities, animation is usually regarded as a very different medium than cinematography. A system that could record reality in motion, in a fashion much like it is seen by the eyes, had a greater impact on people.

Eadweard Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope lectures showed painted contours based on his chronophotography recordings. The only Zoopraxoscope disc with actual photographs was made with an early form of stop motion. Lesser known predecessors, such as Jules Duboscq's Bioscope were not projected.

Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) and other films are now widely regarded as the first examples of proper cinematography, but Le Prince disappeared without a trace before he managed to present his work or publish about it.

Ottomar Anschütz's Electrotachyscope projected very short loops. The films of the Lumières initially lasted circa 50 seconds each.

Thomas Edison believed projection of films wasn't as viable a business model as offering the films in the "peepshow" kinetoscope device. Watching the images on the screen turned out to be much preferred by audiences.

William Friese-Greene's "machine camera", patented in 1889,[19] Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope (developed by William Kennedy Dickson), premiered publicly in 1894.[20] did not impress audiences.

Kazimierz Prószyński had built his camera and projecting device, called Pleograph, in 1894. (no details known)

Lauste and Latham's Eidoloscope was demonstrated for members of the press on April 21, 1895, and opened to the paying public on Broadway on May 20.[21] The Eidoloscope Company was dissolved in 1896 after copyright disputes.

Max and Emil Skladanowsky, inventors of the Bioscop, had offered projected moving images to a paying public in Berlin from 1 November 1895 until the end of the month. Their machinery was relatively cumbersome and their films much shorter. Their planned screening in Paris were cancelled after they had watched the 26 December 1895 Lumière screening and competition seemed futile.

Their house in Lyon is now the Institut Lumière museum.

• Auguste Lumière
• Louis Lumière
• 1895 in film
• 1896 in film
• 19th century in film
• History of film
• L'Idéal Cinéma Jacques Tati in Aniche the oldest still-active cinéma in the world, though not continuously, since 23 November 1905.
• List of works by Louis Botinelly
• Place Ambroise-Courtois

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frères Lumière.

• Louis Lumière on IMDb
• Auguste Lumière on IMDb
• The Lumiere Brothers, Pioneers of Cinema
• Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale
• Louis Lumière at Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
• Auguste Lumière at Who's Who of Victorian Cinema
• Major Exhibition Casts New Light on the Lumières by David Robinson
• The films shown at the first public screening (QuickTime format) — 26 December 1895. Also includes a program for the event.
• Le musée Lumière — Lumière Museum
• Autochrome colour still of the Lumiere Brothers, 1907
• 1895 – Auguste and Louis Lumiere – The first real motion picture ever made on YouTube
• 1896 Palestine 1896 short film (La Palestina En 1896) - Lumieres Brothers