On this day in 1895 in France, Louis Lumiere and his brother were the first entrepreneurs to present projected, moving, photographic pictures to a paying audience of more than one person. With that premiere of “La Sortie de l’usine Lumière a Lyon” (”Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory at Lyon”), the commercial motion picture industry was born, and one can make the argument the consumer electronics industry along with it. Lumiere used his own invention, a portable motion-picture camera, film processing unit and projector called the Cinematographe, for the exhibition. A year later, Thomas Edison’s improved Vitascope projector became the first commercially successful projector in the U.S.
Earlycinema.com has a great general timeline here.
