Auguste and Louis Lumière and the Rise of Motion Pictures

On December 28, 1895, about 35 people in Paris, France, descended into a basement room. The overhead lights were turned off. The audience saw an image projected onto a white sheet on one of the walls. Suddenly the image began to move! This was the first public showing of a motion picture. The device that was used to film the subjects and then serve as a projector was known as a Cinématographe. It had been invented about a year earlier by a young Frenchman named Louis Lumière. Along with his brother Auguste, the two men became important pioneers in making movies. From this primitive beginning, movies have become one of the world’s most popular forms of entertainment.