The beginning of film production[edit source | editbeta]
Precursors of film[edit source | editbeta]
Main article: Precursors of film
One of the first technological precursors of film is the pinhole camera, followed by the more advanced camera obscura, which was first described in detail by Alhazen in his Book of Optics (1021),[1][2][3] and later perfected by Giambattista della Porta. Light is inverted through a small hole or lens from outside, and projected onto a surface or screen. Using camera obscura, it was possible to project a moving image, but there was no means of recording the image for later viewing.
Moving images were produced on revolving drums and disks in the 1830s with independent invention by Simon von Stampfer (Stroboscope) in Austria, Joseph Plateau (Phenakistoscope) in Belgium and William Horner (zoetrope) in Britain.
On June 15, 1878, under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford, Eadweard Muybridge successfully photographed a horse named "Sallie Gardner" in fast motion using a series of 24 stereoscopic cameras. The experiment took place on June 15 at the Palo Alto farm in California with the press present. The exercise was meant to determine whether a running horse ever had all four legs lifted off the ground at once. The cameras were arranged along a track parallel to the horse's, and each camera shutter was controlled by a trip wire which was triggered by the horse's hooves. They were 21 inches apart to cover the 20 feet taken by the horse stride, taking pictures at one thousandth of a second.[4]