Louis LumiéreInventor / Filmmaker
Born: 5 October 1864
Died: 6 June 1948
Birthplace: Besanéon, France
Best known as:
Pioneer inventor in moviemaking and projection
Louis Lumiére was the son of a Antoine Lumiére, a successful pioneer in photography. When Louis was a teenager he developed a photographic process that made the family business even more successful, and then he and his brother Auguste (b. 1862) turned their attention to the new invention of moving pictures. Together they invented a camera/projector called the Cinematograph, and for the first time audiences were able to see large projections of motion pictures (prior to that people watched the new medium through peepshows like those developed by Thomas Edison). The Lumiére brothers' produced thousands of short films, usually documents of everyday life, and were instrumental in the development of the cinema as a popular art form.
At the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, the brothers unveiled a 360 degree panoramic projector, using 70mm film.
Copyright © 1998-2013 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved.
Information Please® Database, © 2007 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved.