History of Photography

History of Photography.

Please click on the image for time-line.

1900	First mass-marketed camera, the Brownie, costs $1. I have one of these and still use it.
	Beginning of film production in Czechoslovakia, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Scandinavia.
1901	Also in History: Queen Victoria dies.
	Pathé acquires the Lumière patents and commissions the design of an improved studio camera.
	Alfred Stieglitz founds the Photo-Secession Group, dedicated to promoting photography as a fine art.
	Otto von Bronk applies for German patent on colour television.
1902-12	Leon Gaumont's Chronophone in France and Cecil Hepworth's Vivaphone system in England produced hundreds of synchronized (sound and picture) shorts.
1903	*American filmmaker Edwin S. Porter's The Great Train Robbery, is important for its use of realistic narrative and continuity of action.*
1905-07	Growth of film theatres in the United States. Named after the Nickelodeon, which opens in Pittsburgh in1905, they are makeshift facilities frequently in storefront properties.
1906	Screen aspect ratio of 1.33 : 1 established as an international viewing standard.
	Beginning of the animated film industry: J. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces.
	Panchromatic plates are marketed by Wratten and Wainright in England.
1906-08	George Albert Smith and Charles Urban develop first commercially successful photographic colour process; Kinemacolor.
1907	Lee de Forest perfects the Audion tube, a triode vacuum tube that magnifies sound.
	Lumière Brother's autochrome colour process is marketed.
	Alfred Korn announces Fac-Simile telegraphy.
	Édouard Belin makes the first telephoto transmission, from Paris to Lyon to Bordeaux and back to Paris.
1908	Hollywood is founded in the Los Angeles area.
	The most powerful American film companies form the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), pool the 16 most significant US patents in order to establish a monopoly on domestic film production.
	Gabriel Lippmann wins a Nobel Prize for his method of reproducing colour by photography.
1908-10	Working for Gaumont, Émile Cohl is the first person to devote his energies to drawn animation.
1908-14	D.W. Griffith and other American filmmakers systematize the use of the close-up, fade-out, iris dissolve, back lighting, soft focus, cross-cutting.
1909	*Winsor McCay, cartoonist, produces first animated cartoon. Gertie the Dinosaur.*
1910	Thomas Ince's New York Motion Picture Co. and the Selig company of Chicago set up studios near Los Angeles, initiating the establishment of west coast studio production.
	American cartoonist John Randolph Bray patents the cell process for film animation.
1910s	Beginning of film production in Australia, Argentina, Canada, Ireland, Spain.
1911-16	Danish actress Asta Nielsen is the first international star whose fame is wholly dependent on her screen appearances.
1912	*Mary Pickford in the leading role of D. W. Griffith's The New York Hat.*
	Nikkatsu is formed out of several smaller companies to become the most powerful studio in Japan.
	*Also in History: Titanic* sinks.**
	Vest Pocket Camera is introduced.
	First Model Speed Graphic is introduced.
1913	*Italy's Cines company's nine-reel Quo Vadis?, shot using huge three-dimensional sets and 5,000 extras, establishes standard for superspectacles.*
	Victor Sjöstrom's early masterpiece Ingeborg Holm.
	Eastman Kodak Company establishes first industrial photographic research laboratory.
1914	The 3,300-seat Strand opens in New York City, marking the end of the nickelodeon era and the beginning of an age of the movie palaces.
	Keystone Cops; slapstick comedy; visual humour.
	Autographic Film.
	First 35mm still cameras are developed.
1914-18	World War I
1915	D. W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, a film of great technical assurance and innovation, is strongly attacked in the liberal and black press for its racist content and is banned in several states through the efforts of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP).
	Charlie Chaplin's The Tramp.
1916	Charlie Chaplin, international star of the American silent comic cinema, stars in The Pawnshop.
	Alvin Langdon Coburn's Vortographs: deliberate abstractions.
	3A Autographic with coupled Rangefinder is introduced.
1917	Mexico is the first country to formally protest the misrepresentation of its people by Hollywood.
	Foundation of Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), the largest studio in Europe for the next decade.
1918	Following litigation for anti-trust activities, the MPPC is ordered to disband by the US Supreme Court.
	Oscar Micheaux, the most successful early African American producer/director, begins making films on black-related topics.
	*American cartoonist Winsor McCay creates what may be the first feature-length animated film, The Sinking of the Lusitania.*
1919	Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charles Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith establish United Artists, a prestigious firm distributing only independently produced films.
	Lee de Forest, in collaboration with Theodore Case and E. I. Sponable, develop an optical sound-on-film process patented as Phonofilm.
	Nationalization of the Soviet film industry and foundation of the State Film School.
1919-33	Golden Age of German cinema . UFA conglomerate becomes single largest studio in Europe.

Last updated on Monday August 30, 2004