Though Thomas Edison is often widely considered the father of "moving pictures," French inventors Louis Lumiere and Auguste Lumiere were technologically and artistically of equal or greater importance to the development of cinema.

Auguste (1862 - 1954) and Louis (1864 - 1948) Lumiere were the sons of a millionaire car manufacturer who lived in Lyon, France. They were interested in photography. Their father often went to the United States on business and brought them back a very expensive prototype movie camera after one of his trips. In today’s money that camera would have cost more than $1 million.

The brothers were fascinated by the movie camera, but horrified at its expense. It was also very hard to use. They decided that they would try to invent a movie camera that was cheap and was easy to use.

It was difficult for the brothers to think of themes for their first movies. They managed to encourage their father’s gardener to take part. He had to hose the flowers in the garden. While Auguste turned the movie, Louis stood on the hose. The gardener looked at the hose to see why it was not working and Louis took his foot off. The gardener received a big jet of water in the face. This was the first movie ever made, a comedy. Then Auguste and Louis filmed all the workers leaving their father’s factory at the end of the day.

Louis had created and patented the cin?matographe, the device that changed the face of early cinema. A combination camera, projection device, and printer, the hand-cranked cin?matographe differed from Edison’s camera in that it was relatively compact and easy to transport while Edison’s was cumbersome, noisy, and used 48 frames per second as opposed to Lumiere’s 16. With the cin?matographe, the brothers were able to chronicle daily events outside the studio.

Their first such film, La Sortie des Usines (1895), filmed workers leaving the Lumiere factory at day’s end. They made 19 more little films including the famed L’Arrivee d’un Train en Gare, and Les Repas de Bebe, as well as the early slapstick film L’Arroseur Arrosee (Watering the Gardener).

Although it was 20 000 kilometers away, Australia saw the the first movies within ten months of their first public showing . The Lumiere Brothers quickly sent movie photographers to photograph exotic places in various parts of the world because people wanted to see moving images of distant countries and peoples.

Such films and their invention were kept a secret and only shown privately twice, until December 1895, when the brothers gave their first public demonstration at the Grand Caf? on the Boulevard des Capucines. Audiences were thrilled by the Lumieres’ invention and word of it spread like wildfire. Soon, attending the cinema was all the rage and this led the brothers to head to England, Belgium, Germany, and Holland to demonstrate their wonderful cin?matographe.

The Lumiere Cinematographe was the first mass produced movie picture camera. The fame of the Cinematographe quickly spread. It was first shown in London at the Polytechnic in March 1896. It was then shown in all the major cities in Europe and arrived in New York in June 1896.

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