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The Paris exposition filmed by James H. White and produced by Edison’s labs was an innovation of its time as technologies arose around the film industries. In many parts these films have been forgotten but their value in the current film industry remains. Edison manages to market Paris for the American people which had become a new wave of satisfying the Americans curiosity. The fact that Edison was able to market a new world theme in a film and the technological innovations in film presented at the Paris exposition are the reason that these films should be conserved because these strategies and technologies are the source of today’s film industry.

The Paris Exposition Universelle was the world fair and a very popular time for new inventors and technologies to be presented and became the perfect scenario for a film. What makes the film unique was the use of a spherical motion camera which was able to capture the Eiffel tower from bottom to top and to move around scenes by pivoting on its position which presented an illusion of motion. The film was able to capture life in Paris and its most marketed and important scene of the Eiffel tower. “We see the base of the Eiffel Tower, with a crowd of people walking under it. Beyond, framed by the tower's arch, is the Palace of Electricity. It's the 1900 Paris Exposition. A few men stop to stare at the camera; then a woman turns and smiles. Slowly, the camera tilts and pans up the tower, nearly to the top, then slowly tilts back to street level. Men look at the camera. A man tips his hat, another smiles. A smiling young man approaches as if to do a flip in mid air. Someone shakes his hand.”(Internet Movie Data Base)

Films had been a dream for many at the end of the 19th century but it arose mainly as an implement to the phonograph (Cook, David ). Edison did not invent films but only perfected them. The optical illusion of moving images was created as they where painted in a rotating disk as kids toys in the early 19th century and then became the foundation of films. The photograph had not pushed the idea of the film, but in 1877 a composition of photograph which resembled a film was taken as an experiment conducted by Muybridge. The idea of Muybridge was to prove that a galloping horse would have all four of its hooves of the ground. Muybridge assembled a series of cameras in a race tracks that would shoot a picture as the horse triggered a thin wire connected to the camera, the images captured constituted a moving picture but could not be categorized as a film as they were taken as sequential pictures and not as a motion picture. In 1882 French physiologist Etiene-Jule Marey invented the first camera that would take a sequential picture of twelve pictures per second which is the minimum amount to create the optical illusion of movement. Marey was not interested in the film industry but he did create the film strip to be able to catch picture of a bird in flight(Cook, David ). “In 1887 an Episcopalian Minister named Hannibal Goodwin  first used the celluloid roll fill as a base for light base emulsion(Cook, David )” and later sold his idea to George Eastman, who started mass producing the roll film. These two men enabled Edison Labs to invent the Kinetograph which became “the first true motion picture camera.”

Edison envisioned the idea of a “home-theater machine” like a television in modern times. In 1888 Edison hired William Laurie Dickson to develop such a device that would accompany the phonograph and therefore create a machine that could play sound and motion picture (Cook, David ). Although, the kinetograph was created by Dickson but the implementation of sound was difficult to synchronize with the movie (<em>Lauer, Jean</em>). “The movies were intended to talk from their very inception, so that in some sense the silent cinema represents a thirty-year aberration from the medium’s natural tendency towards a total representation of reality. More significant is the fact that the first viable motion picture camera was invented as an accessory to a sound recording device and not for its own sake”(Cook, David ).  Edison though very poorly of the kinetoscope as it had no produce the envisioned idea of a home theater system, he even wrote “very doubtful if there is any commercial feature in it, and fear that they will not even earn their cost. (Jonnes, Jill)” In 1894 Edison was proven wrong as a small parlor opened with five kinetoscopes which would play a ninety-second movie for a nickel. Edison quickly started building a movie studio and producing short films (Jonnes, Jill) or better know at the times as “actualities”(<em>Lauer, Jean</em>). Edison produced anything that was for interest for the public (Jonnes, Jill). As Edison knew of the great interest for foreign cultures, he composed a team in 1896 lead by director James White to capture the images of Asia (McKernan, Luke).

Edison had a great affection with the world exposition in Paris and found himself visiting the exposition Universelle where in 1889 the Eiffel tower had just been finished and Edison said that the US would build a larger tower(Jonnes, Jill).  The exposition was a thing of the future with new technologies and arts; it was a time where paris would be filled with tourist from all around the world for the event and a perfect scene for a movie. Edison exploited this marked as he quickly manage to send a team lead by James White for the 1900 exposition to take films of the event with a new kinetograph which featured an spherical (Internet Movie Data Base) that gave the films a uniqueness of motion as the kinetograph did not stay stationary but could move up and down and to the sides (<em>Lauer, Jean</em>). It was the perfect time to capture the images of the exposition including the Eiffel tower and to display the new technology (<em>Lauer, Jean</em>).

One of Edison’s biggest competitors was the Lumiere brothers whose invention almost ended Edison’s carrier as a filmmaker.  The Lumiere was a well known family which had made their profit with the photography business.  With the kinetograph gaining popularity and been part of the business of photography, the Lumiere family wanted profit out of this invention but they found that the prices Edison was charging was too expensive for their taste. Luis Lumiere after dismantling the Kinetoscope came up with a better machine that could not only record films but also reproduce them; it was a camera projector and it became the biggest competitor for the kinetograph. Soon after their invention the Lumiere became famous in the film business sending teams around the world like Edison did and filming things of interest to the public like the famous falling wall which at our own eyes means nothing but at the beginning of small technologies it meant the world(Rhode, Erick). In comparing the falling wall or better known as Démolition d'un mur by the Lumiere’s with Edison’s Paris expositions of 1900; it is noticeable that the quality of the vividness is very similar. The falling of a wall is a shorter actuality than the Paris exposition but the capturing of the film are both very spectacular as they both capture enough film to make the illusion of movement. The Paris films does have an advantage as they could move the camera around which gave a better feeling of the surroundings while the falling wall film is an stationary camera and you can only see the one scene. These are both great examples of the beginning of the film industry and these films are the parents that have created the films we watch today.
<p style="text-align: left">These films may be unknown for many but it is important to realize that these are the beginning of all great films. Also, it is important to know that the idea of sound and picture was always in mind since the beginning. The Paris exposition of 1900 may have not been the most popular film to remember but it made its impact in history as it focuses on the human curiosity of unknown worlds and the technological advances it reproduced. These are very important films that should be conserved and studied.  I enjoyed watching the films and was very unaware of the significance they had in our pass, they surely deserve a space in a time capsule</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Work Cited</p>

<ul>
	<li>
<div style="text-align: left">Cook, David A. History of Narrative Film. New York. Norton and Company, 1981.( great information on history of film )</div></li>
	<li>Internet Movie Data Base, “Panorama of Eiffel Tower(<a href="http://www.imdb.com/year/1900/">1900</a>).”  IMDB 1990-2011<a href="http://www.imdb.com/help/">IMDb.com, Inc</a></li>
	<li>
<div style="text-align: left">Jean Lauer, PhD Candidate in Radio-TV-Film at the University of Texas at Austin. (information about the Paris Exposition Film of 1900)</div></li>
	<li>
<div style="text-align: left">Jonnes, Jill. Eiffel’s Tower. New York. Penguin Books, 2009.(information on Edison and the Paris expositions )</div></li>
	<li>
<div style="text-align: left"> McKernan, Luke. “American manager, cameraman.” British film institute, 1995. <a href="http://www.victorian-cinema.net/white.htm">http://www.victorian-cinema.net/white.htm</a> (found information of James White)</div></li>
	<li>
<div style="text-align: left">Rhode, Erick. A History Of The Cinema. New York. McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd, 1976.(found information of Lumiere Brother)</div></li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: center">Edited Youtube videos of:</p>
<p style="text-align: center">Paris in 1900 - Exposition Universelle
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-4R72jTb74">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-4R72jTb74</a></p>
<p style="text-align: center">and</p>
<p style="text-align: center">LUMIERE Démolition d'un mur
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPUe-sOchbo">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPUe-sOchbo</a></p>