ding Frenchman Lumiere, Briton Robert Paul and American Charles Jenkins. According to Jack C. Ellis, the origins of movies had nothing to do with its artistic potential, but were concerned with ôoptical toysö (1). The purpose of these early devices was to make visual records of people and animals, to record real events as they were unfolding for its own sake. Cook notes the overriding importance of the technology.
Cinema was born as an independent medium only after the cinema machines had been evolved for purposes other than the establishment of such a mediumà.the invention of the machines preceded any serious consideration of their documentary or aesthetic potential; and this relationship has remained constant throughout the history of film because the cinema as its material base is a technological form (6).
The novelty of this new invention appealed to the working class public and immigrants new to the United States who quickly became the audience for the kind of inexpensive peep-show entertainment offered by the new
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