December 28th

On this day - 28th December 1895 - The debut of Cinema

On this day was the first public screening of the films by the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis Jean Lumière. This was not the first screening of a film (which had been done earlier the same year), but the first public screening where admission was charged. It was not coincidental that the Lumière brothers started making films. Their father had run a photographic firm where the brothers worked as physicist and manager. After their father retired in 1892, the brothers started making the shift towards moving pictures. The original cinématographe was patented by Léon Bouly in 1892, but the brothers patented their own version in 1895. Their first footage was recorded on March 19, 1895, and it was of workers leaving the Lumière factory. This is often referer to as the first real motion picture ever made. It was on this day, 28th of December, in 1895 at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris that the brothers held their first public showing of their movies. In all, they showed ten short films including the first film "Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon" (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film was 17 meters long, that translates to approximately 50 seconds of film when hand cranked.  The brothers took their cinématographe in 1896 to Brussels, Bombay, London, Montreal, New York and Buenos Aires.

The worlds first film poster