The history of film technology traces the development of techniques for the recording, construction and presentation of motion pictures. When the film medium came about in the 19th century, there already was a centuries old tradition of screening moving images through shadow play and the magic lantern that were very popular with audiences in many parts of the world. Especially the magic lantern influenced much of the projection technology, exhibition practices and cultural implementation of film. Between 1825 and 1840, the relevant technologies of stroboscopic animation, photography and stereoscopy were introduced. For much of the rest of the century, many engineers and inventors tried to combine all these new technologies and the much older technique of projection to create a complete illusion or a complete documentation of reality. Colour photography was usually included in these ambitions and the introduction of the phonograph in 1877 seemed to promise the addition of synchronized sound recordings. Between 1887 and 1894, the first successful short cinematographic presentations were established. The biggest popular breakthrough of the technology came in 1895 with the first projected movies that lasted longer than 10 seconds. During the first years after this breakthrough, most motion pictures lasted about 50 seconds, lacked synchronized sound and natural colour, and were mainly exhibited as novelty attractions. In the first decades of the 20th century, movies grew much longer and the medium quickly developed into one of the most important tools of communication and entertainment. The breakthrough of synchronized sound occurred at the end of the 1920s and that of full color motion picture film in the 1930s (although black and white films remained very common for several decades). By the start of the 21st century, physical film stock was being replaced with digital film technologies at both ends of the production chain by digital image sensors and projectors.
3D film technologies have been around from the beginning, but only became a standard option in most movie theatres during the first decades of the 21st century.
Television, video and video games are closely related technologies, but are traditionally seen as different media. Historically, they were often interpreted as threats to the movie industry that had to be countered with innovations in movie theatre screenings, such as colour, widescreen formats and 3D.
The rise of new media and digitization have caused many aspects of different media to overlap with film, resulting in shifts in ideas about the definition of film. To differentiate film from television: a film is usually not transmitted live and is commonly a standalone release, or at least not part of a very regular ongoing schedule. Unlike computer games, a film is rarely interactive. The difference between video and film used to be obvious from the medium and the mechanism used to record and present the images, but both have evolved into digital techniques and few technological differences remain. Regardless of its medium, the term "film" mostly refers to relatively long and big productions that can be best enjoyed by large audiences on a large screen in a movie theatre, usually relating a story full of emotions, while the term "video" is mostly used for shorter, small-scale productions that seem to be intended for home viewing, or for instructional presentations to smaller groups.
From ancient times to 1894: motion picture technologies before film
The technology of film emerged mostly from developments and achievements in the fields of projection, lenses, photography and optics. Early techniques that involve moving pictures and/or projection include: Shadowgraphy (probably in practice since prehistoric times) Camera obscura (a natural phenomenon that has possibly been used as an artistic aid since prehistoric times) Shadow puppetry (possibly originated around 200 BCE in Central Asia, India, Indonesia or China) Magic lantern (developed in the 1650s, preceded by some incidental and/or inferior projectors) stroboscopic "persistence of vision" animation devices (phénakisticope since 1833, zoetrope since 1866, flip book since 1868)
Live projection of moving images occurs in the camera obscura (also known as "pinhole image"), a natural phenomenon that may have been used artistically since prehistory. Very occasionally, the camera obscura was used to project theatrical spectacles to entertain small audiences. It is believed that the technique was more commonly used by charlatans, priests and wizards to conjure up magical, religious and necromantic appearances, for instance of spiritual beings like ghosts, gods or demons. The use of a lens in a camera obscura has been dated back to 1550. In the 17th century, the camera obscura was a popular drawing aid and commonly turned into a mobile device, first as tents and not much later as portable wooden boxes. Starting around 1790 with the experiments of Thomas Wedgwood, the box-type camera obscura would be adapted into a photographic still camera by capturing the projected images on plates or sheets that were treated with light-sensitive chemicals.
Around 1659 the magic lantern was developed by Christiaan Huygens. It projected slides that were usually painted in color on glass. A sketch by Huygens believed to have been made in 1659, indicates that moving images from mechanical slides may have been part of the earliest screenings. Around 1790, the magic lantern became an important instrument in the multi-media phantasmagoria spectacles. Rear projection, animated slides, multiple projectors (superimposition), mobile projectors (on tracks or handheld), projection on smoke, sounds, odors and even electric shocks were used to frighten audiences in dedicated theatres with a convincing ghost horror experience. In the 19th century, several other popular magic lantern techniques were developed, including dissolving views and new types of mechanical slides that created dazzling abstract effects (chromatrope, et cetera) or that depicted, for instance, falling snow or the planets and their moons revolving.
Many aspects of cinema are closely related to theatre. The term "photoplay", commonly used in the early days of cinema, reflects the idea of motion pictures as filmed plays. Technologies used for the theatre, such as stage lighting and all kinds of special effects were automatically adopted for use in front of cameras.
1831–1848: Early stroboscopic animation
On 21 January 1831, Michael Faraday introduced an experiment with a rotating cardboard disc with concentric series of apertures that represented cogwheels of different sizes and different amounts of cogs. When looking at a mirror through the holes of one series of apertures, that "wheel" seemed to stand still while the others would appear to move around with different velocities or in opposite directions.
In January 1833, Joseph Plateau, who had been working on similar experiments for years, published a letter about his recently discovered slotted disc inspired by Faraday's input. The illustrated example of a pirouetting dancer demonstrated that if drawings of successive phases of a scene or object in motion replaced the apertures in Faraday's experiment, they would give the impression of fluent motion when viewed in the mirror through the slots. Plateau's Fantascope became better known as the Phénakisticope and its principle would form the basis for many later motion picture technologies (including cinematography). The possibilities of the Fantascope were limited to the short loops of images that could be drawn or printed on a cardboard circle, but Plateau suggested in a letter to Faraday that the principle might find modified applications in, for instance, phantasmagoria.
In May 1833, Simon Stampfer published his Stroboscopische Scheiben that were very similar to Plateau's Fantascope discs. He claimed to have discovered the technique soon after reading about Faraday's experiments in December 1832. In a booklet issued later in 1883 with a new edition of the discs, Stampfer explained the principles of stroboscopic animation, which depends on the fast irregular interruptions of light coming from the observed objects before it enters the eyes. The interruptions allow unnoticed replacement of a certain figure by a similar one that will be interpreted as the same figure, while the vision seems to continue despite these interruptions if these are sufficiently short and regular (shorter than the duration of the impressions of the pictures. Stampfer pointed out that narrower apertures gave darker images (as later established in the Talbot-Plateau law), but that the loss of light needed to be balanced with increased washing out of the contours of the fast-moving pictures with wider apertures. He realised that the pictures should ideallly remain motionless while visible, but doubted that any mechanism could stop and start the transport fast enough. Because most movements in nature could not be "fixed in their individual moments", Stampfer promoted careful analysis of motion and strict division into regular phases for accurate motion designs. Stampfer also suggested several variations of the technology, including a cylinder (similar to the later zoetrope), a long paper or canvas strip looped around two parallel rollers to enable longer theatre scenes (somewhat similar to film) and a theater-like frame (much like the later praxinoscope theatre). In the April 1833 patent application for the stroboscope discs, Stampfer and publisher Matthias Trentsensky had also suggested stroboscopic presentation of transparent pictures (which were commonly used for magic lantern projection).
The earliest known public screening of projected stroboscopic animation was presented by Austrian magician Ludwig Döbler on 15 January 1847 at the Josephstadt Theatre in Vienna, with his patented Phantaskop. The spectacle was well-received with sold-out shows in several European cities during a tour that lasted until the spring of 1848, although one critic complained about the flickering quality of the stroboscopic images.
1849–1870: Photography in motion When photography was introduced in 1839, long exposure times seemed to prohibit a combination with stroboscopic animation. In 1849, Joseph Plateau published about improvements for his Fantascope, including a suggestion by Charles Wheatstone to combine it with his invention of the stereoscope and with inspiration from Wheatstone's early stereoscopic photography. Plateau proposed a stop motion technique avant la lettre with stereoscopic recordings of plaster models in different positions. He never executed the elaborate plan, probably because he had turned blind by this time. Stereoscopic photography became very popular in the early 1850s with David Brewster and Jules Duboscq's new portable viewer with lenses.
Stereoscopy inspired hope that photography could also be augmented with colour and motion for a more complete illusion of reality, and several pioneers started to experiment with these goals in mind.
Antoine Claudet claimed in March 1851 to have exhibited a self portrait that showed 12 sides of his face at the French Industrial Exposition of 1844.La Lumière 1851-03-09 These were probably not meant as a representation of different phases of a motion, but as an overview of different camera angles. However, Claudet got interested in animating stereoscopic photography and in November 1851 he claimed to have created a stereo viewer that showed people in motion.La Lumière 1851-11-16 It could show a motion of two phases repetitively and Claudet worked on a camera that would record stereoscopic pairs for four different poses (patented in 1853).British patent 711 Although Claudet was not satisfied with the stereoscopic effect in this device, he believed the illusion of motion was successful.Le Cosmos 1852-10-03