When you pull out your phone to take a cute picture of your baby, your pet, or your family/friends...do you ever stop to wonder how in the world we came here?
How did we become this advanced in our technology and digital mindset?
I mean...truly...it’s incredible! You can capture a moment in time and have it saved to rewatch again and again. It’s like recalling a memory in your brain, but you can actually pull it out of your pocket and have others witness your memory too.
WHAT. I mean, really. Think about it. It’s amazing! Not only are pictures mind blowing, but video. You are watching life come back into people, places and things by seeing and hearing these memories. It also teleports your mind back to that timeframe and *boom* nostalgia hits. It’s an absolute wonder. One thing that is humbling is understanding how we got here. How did we get to small cameras that also serves as a form of communication with people around the globe? What came before this? Who first invented this? Know that there will be discovery, there will be mystery, and possibly murder in this article!
At one point in time, capturing a moment was merely an idea. We give all the thanks to Louis Le Prince. This guy created and built a single-lens camera and used it to make a very short silent film in 1888. Most people read “short film” and think it will be a few seconds long. Not here! This is maybe no more than 4 seconds long. Louis captured a few popel walking in a garden and this was the first movie camera every created. This was a huge discovery.
If you want to see this short video (and how someone colored and remastered it) check out this video here.
So, why do we not hear more about Louis and his grand accomplishment? Just before patenting his device and taking it to America in 1890...which was Louis’ dream...Louis vanished from the face of the earth. Poof...gone. His wife at the time was sure he was murdered. There have been other conspiracy theories regarding his disappearance...one 2008 magazine claimed that evidence had emerged showing Thomas Edison had arranged Louis’ assasination.
Still a mystery as to what happened! So...if Louis’ vanished...who got the recognition of the movie camera? William Kennedy Dickson. Dickson was a Scottish inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison (...interesting…). Alas, Edison wound up taking credit for the invention and that’s that!
After much testing, Dickson settled on 35 mm film. This is still a standard format that is used in today’s cinema. Although Edison took the credit, don’t forget Dickson’s hard earned work...or Louis’!
So, when you pull out your phone or your high tech camera to take some family videos or capture a special moment...realize how far we have come in technology. Be thankful for this big blessing that we pass as something so small everyday. You can watch your relatives, your children when they were younger, and recall awesome moments in time by pulling out that phone or video and rewatching it.
