S. and in Europe were experimenting with motion pictures at the same time, including the artists and filmmakers George Melies and Edwin Porter (Wenden 16). Melies had come from the theater, and he was also a mechanic. He tried to buy a moving picture camera from Lumiere, but Lumiere would not sell one because he saw no future in it. Melies persisted, however. He made hundreds of small films between the years of 1896 and 194 but died penniless, as his work was not protected by copyright.
Chapman calls cinema that "last machine of the Victorian age" (Chapman 52). Besides photography, the components of the motion picture were the inventions of celluloid and of celluloid roll film, which was patented by George Eastman, a familiar name in connection with photography. Chapman sees the development of cinema as a montage of different inventions that arose in the context of popular culture that included magic shows, literature, and optical toys. It seems that part of the confusion about exactly who invented movies has to do with how the early inventors perceived their invention. Was it a toy? Was it a technical invention? Was it entertainment?
The Lumieres made one of the first films, that of workers leaving their factory at the end of the working day. This camera, called Cinematographe, was used as the printer and projector as well, with a claw-type mechanism that moved each frame into place for a fraction of a second, allowing in a little light (Ellis 27). The Lumiere machine was smaller than Edison's, creating the quality
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