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Modern Day Color And Sound Motion Pictures

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“The desire for a sense of motion, action, and narrative (cinema’s roots) stretch all the way back to prehistory with cave drawings… In fact, the entire history of human accomplishment in the visual arts seems to reveal a deep seated desire to represent time, space, and action visually- and as vividly as possible”. (Lewis 5) Throughout history, people have exhibited a need to be entertained and a need for hope or something to look forward to. Without anything to live for, something to strive for, life can prove to be meaningless. From the production of cave drawings to the creation of modern day color and sound motion pictures, story telling has always been a part of human existence. A look at the history of the development of the …show more content…

The invention of moving pictures began in 1875 in California when Leland Stanford, the governor of California, got into a disagreement with a rival gambler about whether or not all four hooves of a horse are ever off the ground at the same time. To get to the bottom of this argument, “Stanford hired Eadweard Muybridge, a British born entrepreneur and renowned photographer” to set up a row of cameras along a racetrack and capture the stages of the horses gallop with timed exposures. (Lewis 8) This technique, known as the “battery-of-camera” technique, brought photography leaps and bonds closer to cinema. After proving that all four hooves of a horse are indeed off the ground at the same time, Muybridge took his series photographs on the road where he not only exhibited his work but also talked about the technology that produced it. It was at one of these shows that Thomas Edison met with Muybridge and became “interested in producing a more sophisticated simulation of movement on film than Muybridge’s series photographs could ever have produced… He had plans to develop a system that might sync serial images with recorded sound played back on the Edison phonograph”. (Lewis 9). After meeting with Muybridge, Edison enlisted photographer William Kennedy Laurie Dickson to help him take technology one step further and create a camera that could take a sequence of pictures with a single load

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