50 Fun Facts About Lumière Brothers

What were the first names of the two Lumière brothers?

Auguste was the elder by two years; both outlived their brief film careers by decades.

In which French city was the Lumière family business and factory based?

The factory in the Monplaisir quarter is now the Institut Lumière, on a street renamed rue du Premier-Film.

In which town were the Lumière brothers born?

Their father Antoine ran a small photographic portrait studio there before the move to Lyon.

What three functions did the Lumières' single machine combine?

They patented their Cinématographe on 13 February 1895.

Who had originally patented a device called the Cinématographe in 1892?

He could not pay his patent fees in 1894 and the name became available for the Lumières to use.

Whose idea of film perforations did the Lumières patent for advancing film?

Reynaud's Théâtre Optique had shown hand-drawn moving pictures at the Musée Grévin since 1892.

On what date did the Lumières give their first paid public screening?

It is traditionally regarded as the birth of cinema, though earlier paid screenings did exist.

Where in Paris did the first paid Lumière screening take place?

The building at 14 Boulevard des Capucines is now the Hotel Scribe, which named a restaurant Café Lumière.

Roughly how many paying visitors attended the first commercial Lumière screening?

A private showing on 22 March 1895 had drawn around 200 members of an industrial society.

How many short films made up the programme at the first paid Grand Café screening?

Each ran about 50 seconds when hand-cranked, from a strip up to 17 metres long.

What did the first real motion picture, shown privately in March 1895, depict?

It was the single film shown privately in Paris on 22 March 1895.

How many versions of the factory-gate film exist?

They are nicknamed the one-horse, two-horses and no-horse versions after the carriage that appears.

Which Lumière film is the earliest known film comedy and first fictional film?

Louis Lumière cast his own gardener, François Clerc, to play the gardener who gets sprayed.

Whose infant daughter Andrée is fed in the film Repas de bébé?

Early viewers, Méliès among them, were struck less by the baby than by the leaves moving in the wind behind.

Which Lumière film is popularly, but wrongly, said to have sent an audience fleeing?

Contrary to popular belief it was not even on the programme of the 28 December 1895 screening; it was first shown in Lyon in January 1896.

In what form did Louis Lumière re-shoot the train film for a 1934 scientific meeting?

The brothers had been chasing a 3D image even before their first public exhibition.

Which Lumière film did the brothers famously project both forwards and in reverse?

Auguste Lumière appears in the film directing the demolition at the factory.

Which Lumière operator filmed Venice from a moving gondola in 1896?

Promio also directed Sweden's first newsreel, of King Oscar II in 1897.

In which country did Lumière operator Gabriel Veyre direct 35 films in 1896-97?

A pharmacy graduate from Lyon, he later worked in Indochina and Morocco.

Which filmmaker offered the Lumières 10,000 francs for a camera and was refused?

The Musée Grévin's 20,000 francs and the Folies Bergère's 50,000 francs were turned down the same night.

Which phrase is attributed to the brothers about their own creation?

Auguste separately called it a scientific curiosity with no commercial value whatsoever.

By what year had the Lumière brothers withdrawn from the film business?

Their operators had by then shot more than a thousand short actuality films.

Which colour process did the Lumières patent in 1903 and market in 1907?

It was the first practical colour process and dominated colour photography until the 1930s.

What vegetable provided the dyed starch grains in the Lumières' 1907 colour plates?

The grains measured 5 to 10 micrometres and looked grey to the naked eye when mixed.

Which photographic manufacturer's merger caused the Lumière brand name to disappear?

For much of the 20th century the company was one of Europe's biggest makers of photographic goods.

At what age did Louis Lumière invent a new dry-plate process for the family firm?

The plates were so successful that a new factory eventually turned out 15 million a year.

Which Edison device inspired the brothers to develop their own machine?

Edison's peephole machine was viewed by one person at a time; the Lumières projected for a room.

Which technical school in Lyon did both Lumière brothers attend?

Louis graduated with the highest marks in his class.

Which frame rate did the Lumières advocate for their hand-cranked machine?

The device weighed only about 7 kilograms, a fraction of Edison's electric equipment.

Which astronomer criticised the Lumière machine's shimmer at a June 1895 convention?

The Lumières filmed the delegates of that photographic congress arriving in Lyon.

Which country saw Lumière films screened in November 1896, first in Alexandria then Cairo?

The 1896 tour also reached Mexico City, Bombay, London, Montreal, New York and Buenos Aires.

Which brothers showed projected films to a paying Berlin public in November 1895?

Their Paris bookings were cancelled once news of the Lumière show broke.

Which 1888 film by Louis Le Prince is regarded as the oldest surviving film?

Le Prince vanished from a train in 1890 before he could publicly demonstrate his cameras.

Which US projection system opened to the paying public on Broadway in May 1895?

Its films ran up to twenty minutes, but the company dissolved in 1896 amid disputes.

Which Polish inventor built his Pleograph camera-projector in 1894?

Ottomar Anschütz's Electrotachyscope was projecting short high-quality loops in the same years.

Which future film mogul reportedly attended the private screening of 22 March 1895?

Louis's lecture that day was actually about colour photography; the moving pictures stole the show.

Which subject did Louis Lumière's 22 March 1895 lecture mainly concern?

Their bichromated glue colour process was later exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition.

Where are the Lumière brothers buried?

Louis died in 1948 and Auguste in 1954.

Which field did the elder Lumière brother turn to after cinema, pioneering X-rays?

He is described as an engineer, industrialist, biologist and illusionist.

Who co-founded the Institut Lumière in 1982 with Louis's grandson?

Bertrand Tavernier served as its president and Thierry Frémaux as director.

Which Russian writer described a Lumière train appearing on screen in an 1896 article?

Some spectators admitted to being frightened, though there is no evidence of a mass panic.

Which Lumière film's title translates as 'the sprinkler sprinkled'?

A boy steps on the hose, the gardener peers into the nozzle, and slapstick is born.

The word Cinématographe was coined from Greek roots meaning what?

Léon Bouly used it in his 1892 patent, and it became the root of both 'cinematography' and 'cinema'.

On film of what gauge were the early Lumière films, including the factory-gate film, shot?

At 16 frames per second, 17 metres of film ran for about 46 seconds.

The three-colour principle behind the Autochrome was first suggested in 1855 by which Scottish physicist?

Louis Ducos du Hauron, John Joly and James McDonough all refined the idea before the Lumières made it commercial.

Which brother failed in his attempt to build the first machine and handed the project to the other?

A contract between the brothers nonetheless bound them to share credit and profit for every discovery.

Louis's teenage dry-plate process let the family open a factory eventually making how many plates a year?

That industrial success bankrolled the brothers' later experiments with moving pictures and colour.

In an Autochrome plate, what fills the gaps between the dyed starch grains?

The grains, dyed red-orange, green and blue-violet, act as tiny colour filters under a black-and-white emulsion.

The Lyon street where the factory-gate scene was shot has since been renamed what?

The former factory in the Monplaisir district is now the Institut Lumière, a museum of cinema history.

How many frames make up the 46-second Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory?

Two remakes exist, nicknamed the 'one horse', 'two horses' and 'no horse' versions after a passing carriage.