Moving Pictures and the Birth of Cinema

Cinema combined photography, mechanics and light. Edison's company developed the Kinetoscope, a peep-show viewer for one person, in the early 1890s. In Paris on 28 December 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumière projected films to a paying audience using their Cinématographe, creating the shared cinema experience. Films quickly grew from short scenes to feature-length stories, and the industry clustered in Hollywood, attracted by sunshine and varied landscapes. Sound films arrived with The Jazz Singer in 1927.

Cinema became a global entertainment industry and a powerful tool for persuasion: governments made newsreels and propaganda films during wars, and filmmakers shaped how audiences imagined history, other peoples and the future. Critics have long debated whether film mainly reflects society's values or helps create them. Studying old films as historical sources means asking who made them, for whom and why.