A motion picture camera is a type of photographic camera that rapidly captures a sequence of photographs onto film or an image sensor to produce a moving image. The groundwork was laid by Eadweard Muybridge, who photographed a running horse with a row of synchronized still cameras in 1878, and by Etienne-Jules Marey, whose 1882 chronophotographic gun was the first device to capture a sequence of moving images on a single plate using a mechanical shutter. Working cameras that recorded motion onto a continuous strip of film followed between 1888 and 1891 from Louis Le Prince, William Friese-Greene, Thomas Edison's laboratory and William Kennedy Laurie Dickson's perforated-film Kinetograph, and commercially viable combined camera-and-projector systems followed in the early 1890s from the Lumiere brothers and Kazimierz Proszynski.
Facts
Patent or First-Use Date SignificanceLe Prince's route to a working motion picture camera went through an intermediate sixteen-lens prototype built at his Leeds workshop before he simplified the design to a single lens, the version he used in 1888 to shoot the Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge, among the earliest surviving motion picture footage. 2 Connections
In Field
Source Movie camera (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Held Differently
Thomas Edison, Engineers Why this is disputed. Edison's laboratory built a working motion-picture camera between 1888 and 1891, in the same window as rival cameras from Louis Le Prince, William Friese-Greene and William Kennedy Laurie Dickson's perforated-film Kinetograph.
Sources
1. Le Prince Motion Picture Camera Patent US376247 (Google Patents)
Google Patents / United States Patent Officepatent header, US Patent 376,247Quote, patent header, US Patent 376,247
No. 376,247. Patented Jan. 10, 1888.
2. Movie camera (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikimedia FoundationHistory, Development subsection, Le Prince paragraph
After much trial and error, he was finally able to develop a single-lens camera in 1888, which he used to shoot sequences of moving pictures on paper film, including the Roundhay Garden Scene and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge.
History, Development subsection, sixteen-lens prototype sentence
One prototype included a 16-lens system, which was developed at his workshop in Leeds.
In Field: Mechanical Engineering, Lead section
In contrast to the still camera, which captures a single image at a time, the movie camera takes a series of images by way of an intermittent mechanism or by electronic means; each image is a frame of film or video.
View the Source Frequently Asked Questions
Did Louis Le Prince build a working motion picture camera before Edison's laboratory?
Le Prince patented his camera in January 1888 and built a single-lens version that year.
Le Prince patented a motion picture camera in the United States on January 10, 1888 (US Patent 376,247). After much trial and error, including a prototype with a 16-lens system built at his workshop in Leeds, he developed a single-lens camera in 1888 that he used to shoot sequences of moving pictures on paper film. Working cameras from William Friese-Greene and Thomas Edison's laboratory, including Dickson's Kinetograph, followed between 1888 and 1891.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.