*** Welcome to piglix ***

Henri Joly


Henri Joly (1866–1945) was a French inventor and businessman. He developed early versions of motion picture film, cameras, and projectors.

Joly was born in Viomenil, Vosges in 1866. By 1889 he was a gymnastics instructor at the school of Joinville, and was introduced to the nascent moving-picture technology when pioneers Étienne-Jules Marey and Georges Demenÿ (who was also a gymnast) came there to make motion-picture studies. Joly became acquainted with the Edison Kinetoscope when it was publicly introduced in Paris in 1894. In 1895 Joly met Charles Pathé, a Vincennes merchant who sold phonographs, who began importing pirated Kinetoscopes (made by Robert W. Paul in England) in May 1895.

The short "movies" presented on the early Kinetoscopes had little variety, and they rapidly wore out. As Joly became aware of these shortcomings, he offered to make a camera for Pathé that could be used to reproduce the Kinetoscope films. Pathé agreed to fund the development, and on 26 August 1895, Joly filed a patent application for a camera that could provide films both for a projector and for the Kinetoscope. The camera used a mechanical movement similar to that in the Demenÿ system, and utilized perforated film which could be advanced on mechanical sprockets. He made his first moving picture, titled Le Bain d'une Mondaine in September–October of that year. On 8 October 1895 Joly filed a patent for another machine, the "Photozootrope", which was essentially a large Kinetoscope with four eyepieces. He sold a few units, but did not achieve major success with this development.

Pathé realized the commercial possibility of Joly's camera, and in 1896 he dissolved his agreement with Joly. He managed to secure the rights to the camera and the film process, going on to great success in the motion picture world. During 1896 Joly filed three other patent applications: the first for another camera; the second for a method of eliminating "flicker" from the projected image; and the third for a method of adding the perception of depth to the filmed image. During the final years of the decade Joly teamed with a French businessman and engineer, Ernest Normandin, to make and exhibit motion pictures. The process, officially called Joly-Normandin but also billed first as Cinematographe Joly, and then as Royal Biograph, was being exhibited at the Bazar de la Charité in 1897 when a disastrous fire (caused by a Molteni ether lamp) occurred. It was later exhibited in England (at the Empire in Leicester Square), and in Ireland (billed as "Professor Jolly's Cinematograph").


...
Wikipedia

...