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The movie camera, film camera or cine-camera is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on an image sensor or on a film. In contrast to a still camera, which captures a single snapshot at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images; each image constitutes a "frame". This is accomplished through an intermittent mechanism. The frames are later played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, called the frame rate (number of frames per second). While viewing at a particular frame rate, a person's eyes and brain merge the separate pictures together to create the illusion of motion.

HISTORY

An interesting forerunner to the movie camera was the machine invented by Francis Ronald’s at the Kew Observatory in 1845. A photosensitive surface was drawn slowly past the aperture diaphragm of the camera by a clockwork mechanism to enable continuous recording over a 12- or 24-hour period. Ronald’s applied his cameras to trace the ongoing variations of scientific instruments and they were used in observatories around the world for over a century.

The very first patented film camera was the one devised by Wordsworth Donisthorpe in 1876. Another film camera was designed in England by Frenchman Louis Le Prince in 1888. An earlier 16 lens camera in 1887 at his workshop in Leeds. The first 8 lenses would be triggered in rapid succession by an electromagnetic shutter on the sensitive film; the film would then be moved forward allowing the other 8 lenses to operate on the film. After much trial and error, he was finally able to develop a single lens camera in 1888, which he used to shoot the first sequences of moving film in the world, including the Roundhay Garden Scene and Leeds Bridge. According to Adolphe Le Prince, who assisted his father at Leeds, Roundhay Garden was shot at 12 frame/s and Leeds Bridge at 20 frame/s. His camera still exists with the National Media Museum in Bradford. He shot the film on celluloid with 1¾ inch width.

Another early pioneer was the British inventor William Friese-Greene. He began to experiment with the use of oiled paper as a medium for displaying motion pictures in 1885 and by 1887 he was experimenting with the use of celluloid. In 1889, Friese-Greene took out a patent for a 'chronophotographic' camera. This was capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using perforated celluloid film. A report on the camera was published in the British Photographic News on February 28, 1890. He gave a public demonstration in 1890 of his device, but the low frame rate combined with the device's apparent unreliability made an unfavorable impression.

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a Scottish inventor and employee of Thomas Edison, designed the Kinetographic Camera in 1891. The camera was powered by an electric motor and was capable of shooting with the new sprocketed film. To govern the intermittent movement of the film in the camera, allowing the strip to stop long enough so each frame could be fully exposed and then advancing it quickly (in about 1/460 of a second) to the next frame, the sprocket wheel that engaged the strip was driven by an escapement disc mechanism—the first practical system for the high-speed stop-and-go film movement that would be the foundation for the next century of cinematography.

Film-gun at the Institut Lumière, France. The Lumière Domitor camera was created by Charles Moisson, the chief mechanic at the Lumière works in Lyon in 1894. The camera used paper film of 35 millimeter width, but in 1895 the Lumière brothers shifted to celluloid film, which they bought from New-York’s Celluloid Manufacturing Co. This they covered with their own Etiquette-bleue emulsion, had it cut into strips and perforated.

In 1894 the Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński constructed a projector and camera in one, an invention he called the Pleograph.

Mass-market

The Aeroscope (1910) was the first hand-held movie camera. Due to the work of Le Prince, Friese-Greene, Edison and the Lumière brothers, the movie camera had become a practical reality by the mid-1890s. The first firms were soon established for the manufacture of movie camera, including Birt Acres, Eugene Augustin Lauste, Dickson, Pathé frères, Prestwich, Newman & Guardia, de Bedts, Gaumont-Démény, Schneider, Schimpf, Akeley, Debrie, Bell & Howell, Leonard-Mitchell, Ertel, Ernemann, Eclair, Stachow, Universal, Institute, Wall, Lytax, and many others.

The Aeroscope was built and patented in England in the period 1909-1911 by Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński. Aeroscope was the first successful hand-held operated film camera. The cameraman did not have to turn the crank to advance the film, as in all cameras of that time, so he could operate the camera with both hands, holding the camera and controlling the focus. This made it possible to film with the Aeroscope in difficult circumstances including from the air and for military purposes.

The first all-metal cine camera was the Bell & Howell Standard of 1911-12. One of the most complicated models was the Mitchell-Technicolor Beam Splitting Three-Strip Camera of 1932. With it, three color separation originals are obtained behind a purple, a green, and a red light filter, the latter being part of one of the three different raw materials in use.

In 1923 Eastman Kodak introduced a 16mm film stock, principally as a lower cost alternative to 35mm and several camera makers launched models to take advantage of the new market of amateur movie-makers. Thought initially to be of inferior quality to 35mm, 16mm cameras continued to be manufactured until the 2000s by the likes of Bolex, Arri and Aaton.

THOMAS EDISON

Edison began working on motion pictures after seeing a lecture by Eadweard Muybridge, who used his Zoopraxiscope to simulate the motion of animals. Edison's discussion with Muybridge stimulated him to take up the subject of moving pictures. In doing so, he sought to design "an instrument that does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear." Edison's first design involved photographing a series of pictures on a cylinder that would then be viewed through a microscope as they turned. In addition, he planned to create sound movies by linking this device with a phonograph.

Edison's work on motion pictures drew heavily on the talents of W. K. L. Dickson, a member of his experimental staff who was also a photographer. While Edison provided the resources, the vision for the invention, and the electromechanical knowledge used in designing motion picture devices, Dickson provided most of the knowledge of photography that those inventions drew on. By 1892 Edison and Dickson invented a motion picture camera and a peephole viewing device called the Kinetoscope. They were first shown publicly in 1893 and the following year the first Edison films were exhibited commercially.

Edison was one of many inventors in the United States and Europe who were working on motion pictures and should be credited as the first to introduce a commercial system. However, Edison played almost no role in the development of projector technology and other improvements in motion picture technology. Indeed, although the first projector used by the Edison film company was called the Edison Vitascope, it was designed by C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. Edison had relatively little to do with the film business and left the making of motion pictures to others, notably Edwin S. Porter, who directed the innovative Great Train Robbery in 1903. By 1918 Edison was out of the film business.

Sources, References & Credits: Google, Wikipedia, Wikihow, Pinterest, IMDB, Linked In, Indie Wire, Cinema Blend, Variety, Creative Skill Set, No Film School, Cinema Blend, Science 20, Reddit, Edison Papers, Rutgers, Joseph and Barbara Anderson, The Myth of Persistence of Vision Revisited, European Society for the History of Photography, National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Popular Mechanics, Britannica

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