Illustration by Maria Manhattan.
Auguste (1862-1954) Louis (1864-1948)
The Lumière Brothers, Louis, October 5, 1864 and Auguste, October 19, 1862 were born in Besançon, France and brought up in Lyon. Their father, a successful pioneer in photography, ran a photographic firm and the brothers worked for him. As a teenager, Louis, who excelled at science in school, created a more sensitive new form of dry plate, an early type of film. In 1895, they patented and demonstrated the Cinématographe, a portable, all-in-one motion picture camera, projector and developer. Artists and inventors, the Lumière Brothers, who are considered the fathers of cinema, produced over a thousand short films, and presented the first pay-to-view film screening at the Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895.
