Making movie history
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MARK AUSTIN THOMAS: Time to open the Marketplace Vault and take a peak at this week in the History of Business: Two brothers and the silver screen.
STACEY VANEK-SMITH: This week back in 1895, a group of Parisians became the first people in the world to buy movie tickets.
Louis and August Lumiere held the first commercial screening of a film at the Grand CafA© in Paris.
The year before, the brothers had invented a moving picture camera and projector. The first film featured short clips, including one of workers leaving a factory, a blacksmith working and a baby being fed.
The brothers made 2,000 short films over the next five years. They even took the camera and films on tour to Bombay, London and New York.
But they eventually abandoned film, thinking cinema was an invention without any future.
The brothers turned their attention to a more static medium. They became one of the top producers of still photography equipment in Europe.
I’m Stacey Vanek-Smith.
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