Louis Lumière

French scientist and cinematographer. He worked with his brother Auguste to invent the cinematograph, a combination motion-picture camera, printer, and projector. Though no one single person can be considered the one inventor of the cinema, Louis Lumière has perhaps the strongest claim to the title. Some of the first motion pictures were produced and shown to audiences with the apparatus devised by Louis and Auguste, which projected films onto a screen. The invention was patented on 13 February 1895.

The brother were the son of a businessman, Antoine Lumière, who saw that his boys received a good education. The younger son, Louis, developed a dry-plate photo process, known as Etiquette bleue, which brought fame and financial success to the family business. To manufacture and commercialize the plates, Antoine bought a large tract of land in the Monplaisir quarter in the Lyon suburbs.

In the autumn of 1894, Antoine Lumière asked his sons to work on the problem of animated images, which had so far stumped such great inventors as Edison and others. This paternal push in the right direction resulted in the invention of the "Lumière Cinematograph."

The first film using the new invention was "Leaving the Lumière Factory." taking place in Lyon, France on 19 March 1895 in what is now known as the Rue du Premier Film. This first film opened the way for the development of cinema.

A program of short films directed and photographed by Louis was first unveiled to the general public on 28 December 1895: a date that many historians claim to be the birth date of the cinema as we know it. The showing of approximately ten short films lasting only twenty minutes in total was held in the basement lounge of the Grand Cafe on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris, It was the very first public demonstration of their device they called the Cinematograph, which effectively functioned as camera, projector and printer all in one.