February–March – Robert W. Paul and Birt Acres build and run the first working 35 mm movie camera in Britain, the Kineopticon. Their first films include Incident at Clovelly Cottage, The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race and Rough Sea at Dover.[1]
In France, the brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, design and built a lightweight, hand-held motion picture camera called the Cinématographe. They discover that their machine can also be used to project images onto a large screen. The Lumière brothers create several short films at this time that are considered to be pivotal in the history of motion pictures.[1]
May 27 – Birt Acres patents the Kineopticon under his own name.
Late September – C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat demonstrate their Phantoscope, a motion picture projector, in Atlanta, Georgia at the Cotton States and International Exposition.
November – In Germany, Emil and Max Skladanowsky develop their own film projector.
December 28 – The Lumière brothers have their first paying audience at the Grand Café Boulevard des Capucines in Paris — this date is sometimes considered the debut of the motion picture as an entertainment medium.
December 30 – The American Mutoscope and Biograph Company motion pictures is founded in New Jersey by the KMCD Syndicate of William Kennedy Dickson, Henry Marvin, Herman Casler and Elias Koopman.[2]
Gaumont Pictures founded by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont. Woodville Latham and his sons develop the Latham Loop – the concept of loose loops of film on either side of the intermittent movement to prevent stress from the jerky movement. This is debuted in the Eidoloscope, which is also the first widescreen format (1.85:1).
Herman Casler of American Mutoscope Company, a.k.a. American Mutoscope and Biograph Company manufactures the Biograph 68 mm camera, which will become the first successful large format 68mm (70mm) film.
Henri Joly debuts his Joly-Normandin 60 mm format.
Films released in 1895[]
L'Arroseur Arrosé (1895) the earliest known instance of film comedy, as well as the first use of film to portray a fictional story.
^ abBurns, Paul (1999). "Chapter 15, 1895–1900". The History of the Discovery of Cinematography. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011. Retrieved 2011-08-14.