Max Skladanowsky

German inventor and early filmmaker who, along with his brother Emil, invented the Bioscop, an early movie projector they used to display a moving picture show to a paying audience on 1 November 1895. This was shortly before the public debut of the Lumière Brothers' Cinématographe in Paris on 28 December 1895.

Born as the fourth child of glazier Carl Theodor Skladanowsky and Luise Auguste Ernestine Skladanowsky, Max Skladanowsky was apprenticed as a photographer and glass painter, which led to an interest in magic lanterns. He also single-handedly constructed the Bioskop projector. Partially based on the dissolving view lantern, it featured two lenses and two separate film reels, one frame being projected alternately from each. It was hand-cranked to transport 44.5mm-wide unperforated Eastman-Kodak film-stock, which was carefully cut, perforated and re-assembled by hand and coated with an emulsion developed by Max.

The Skladanowsky brothers shot several films in May 1895. Max had constructed a new camera with a Geneva drive in the autumn of 1895, and the new single-lens Bioskop-II projector in the summer of 1896. Eventually, the last Bioskop show by the Skladanosky brothers took place in Stettin on 30 March 1897.

After this Skladanowsky returned to his former photographic activities including the production of flip books and further magic lantern shows. Between the years 1895 and 1905, the brothers directed at least 25 to 30 short movies.

Max Skladanowsky died on 30 November 1939 in Berlin at age 76. His brother Emil died in 1945.

In 1995, the German filmmaker Wim Wenders directed a drama documentary film Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky (The Skladanowsky Brothers) in collaboration with students of the Munich Academy for Television and Film.