Early Technologies
During the late 19th and early 20th Centuries rapid developments were occurring in the fields of photography and the arts. These developments were leading to the introduction of increasingly complicated technologies for the recording and exhibition of films and animations. This section will outline just a few of these developments, which have helped lead to the development of modern animation.
Praxinoscope
The praxinoscope was a device created by the French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud in 1877, it was an extension of the zoetrope, a simple animation device comprised of a cylinder with slits cut in its slides, between these slits would be a series of hand-painted drawings. The device would be spun, giving an illusion of animation. By using mirrors instead of slits, the praxinoscope could show the images with better definition. Both devices could show short looped animations of a few frames to a single viewer (Herbert, S. & McKernan, L. 1996).
Please enable JavaScript and ensure Adobe Flash Player is installed to view this video.
In 1880, Reynaud invented the projection praxinoscope. This device projected a series of 12 images onto a small screen. This allowed several viewers to observe an animation - in a similar manner to watching a (yet-to-be invented) television screen. But over the next few years, this concept was developed to project longer animations on larger screens.
These developments culminated with the exhibition of Reynaud’s Théâtre Optique in 1892. The Théâtre Optique was a presentation in a theatre of a series of 15 minute animations, accompanied by a live piano performance. Reynaud’s animations were composed of a series of approximately 500-700 hand-painted images on square slides of gelatine, projected onto a large screen. These slides were mounted in a leather strip, with punched metal plates between each slide ensuring the slides aligned correctly for projection. This was analogous to the registration holes used in Edison’s Kinetoscope a few years later (Herbert, S. & McKernan, L. 1996).
Backgrounds for each scene would be projected using a magic lantern, this simplified the process of producing the slides as the background did not need to be reproduced for each slide - it also enabled Reynaud to change the setting for different performances.
While this system allowed the projection of high-quality, colour animations, they were extremely difficult and time consuming to produce - with hundreds of gelatine slides needing to be hand painted, mounted in leather strips and carefully loaded onto large metal reels. The effect of the animations was also jerky and slow. Reynaud’s performances were however popular with audiences, with The Théâtre Optique being exhibited at the Musée Grévin in Paris until 1900, by which time over 500,000 people had viewed its animations.
A performance of the Theatre Optique in Paris, 1892, and a frame from a Theatre Optique projection (Both images, Wikipedia, 2007d)
Motion-Picture Cameras
While animation and motion-pictures were initially separate, they later became inexorably connected. Thus, an exploration of the history of animation would not be complete without briefly exploring the introduction of photographic film and the motion-picture camera.
Thomas Edison
The prolific American inventor Thomas Edison is considered to be the first to create a film-based motion-picture camera. His Kinetograph used an early Kodak film (made available in 1888), cut into 35mm wide strips with holes punched along the edges - allowing the smooth and constant movement of film through the camera. This camera however was large, heavy and required very bright light to properly expose the film. This limited its use to a studio environment - and thus its widespread usefulness.
A Kinetoscope (Wikipedia, 2007b)
The Kinetoscope was a viewing device for films captured on the Kinetograph, it was a free-standing device with a coin-slot and a viewing port on its top. The Kinetoscope also coined the phrase “peep show.” It allowed a single user to view a short film - about 2-3 minutes. Allowing multiple users to view the films would increase revenue, but Edison felt screen-projection would do the opposite:
No, if we make this screen machine that you are asking for, it will spoil everything. We are making these peep show machines and selling a lot of them at a good profit. If we put out a screen machine there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines you could show the pictures to everybody in the country-and then it would be done. Let’s not kill the goose that lays the golden egg (Wikipedia, 2007b).
Despite its flaws, the Kinetograph and associated viewer the Kinetoscope were first shown in 1891, spread rapidly across the United States and Europe where individual users could view short films for a fee - approximately 25 cents, which cost more than a theatre ticket at the time.
By 1896 Edison realized his mistake in rejecting the concept of projection - with sales of the Kinetoscope and Kinetograph falling by 95 percent due to competition from the new flip-book based peep-show device the Mutoscope - which was far cheaper than the Kinetoscope - and the projection system developed by the French Lumière brothers.
He bought the patents for a projection device, but by this stage it was too late and it never gained widespread adoption. Despite his earlier success, he spent the remainder of the decade attempting to sue anyone who was becoming involved in the fledgling film industry.
Lumière Brothers
In France, the Lumière brothers - who at the time were the largest manufacturers of photographic plates in Europe - noticed the shortcomings of Edison’s system. They bought the rights to a new camera developed by Léon Bouly - the Cinématographe. This camera was small, portable and mounted on a tripod could film anywhere.
The Cinématographe could also serve as a projector - meaning a single device could be used to capture and exhibit films. The Cinématographe offered superior images compared to the Kinetograph - the photographic experience of the Lumière’s would have contributed in this regard. Their camera’s frame rate of 16 frames-per-second would also remain the standard for the next 20 years - changing to 24 frames-per-second with the advent of synchronised soundtracks.
Impact on Animation
The development of the motion-picture camera enabled more complicated animations to reach a wider audience than was possible using earlier techniques. Animation however, was slower to develop, with the first full animation appearing on film being Humorous Phases of Funny Faces released in 1906. Although films incorporating some animation had been shown earlier.