Max Skladanowsky

Max Skladanowsky (April 30, 1863 – November 30, 1939) was a German inventor and early filmmaker. Along with his brother Emil, he invented the Bioscop, an early movie projector the Skladanowsky brothers used to display the first moving picture show to a paying audience on November 1, 1895, just before the December 28, 1895 public debut of the Lumière Brothers' technically superior Cinématographe in Paris. (The Lumiere brothers had previously held a private debut of the Cinematographe on March 22, 1895.)

Born in Pankow near Berlin to a glazier, Max Skladanowsky was apprenticed as a photographer and glass painter, which led to an interest in magic lanterns. In 1879, he began to tour Germany and Central Europe with his father Carl and elder brother Emil, giving dissolving magic lantern shows. In the early 1890s he built a film camera along with Emil, and in 1895 the brothers produced the Bioscop. The Bioscop, which was inspired by magic-lantern technology, used two loops of 54mm film, one frame being projected alternately from each. This made it possible for the Bioscop to project at 16 frames per second, a speed sufficient to create the illusion of movement.

A demonstration of the Bioscop in Pankow, Berlin in July 1895 was witnessed by the directors of the Wintergarten music hall who contracted Skladanowsky for a sum of 2500 Goldmark to present his invention as the final act in a variety performance commencing on November 1, 1895. The show was advertised as "the most interesting invention of the modern age" and played to capacity crowds for around four weeks. The show itself consisted of a number of very short films of arounds six seconds each which were rear-projected and repeated a number of times to a specially composed musical accompaniment.

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