February 13 — brothers Louis and Auguste Lumiere patented the first device for producing moving images. According to legend, the story of the invention goes like this. One night Louis Lumiere was tormented by a headache. The pain kept Louis from falling asleep until morning.
But by morning the concept of a new device was ready: a projector with a cam mechanism for feeding perforated film with images. Very little time passed after receiving the patent, and the Lumiere brothers brought to life the invention of a combined motion-picture camera.
December 28 — in Paris, the Lumiere brothers demonstrated the invention in action. On the Boulevard des Capucines, in the basement of the Grand Cafe, they held the first public paid film screening. The Lumiere program included ten films, among them “The Sprinkler Sprinkled,” the world’s first comedy. By staging the first public paid screening, the Lumieres became the inventors of cinema as a new kind of performing art.
This commercial screening effectively marked the beginning of world cinema.