Auguste Lumière

Auguste married Marie Euphrasie Marguerite Winckler Lumière on August 31, 1893. The couple had two children. Their daughter Joséphine Léocadie Andrée Lumière was born on Jun 22, 1894, and son Henri Louis René Lumière was born on May 8, 1897.

Auguste Lumière lived until the age of 91 and died at home on April 10, 1954, in Lyon.

Auguste Lumière was born on October 19, 1862 in Besançon, France. His father Claude-Antoine Lumière was initially a painter; but later he began to deal in photographic equipments and made a lot of money from it. The name of Auguste’s mother was Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière.

Apart from Auguste, the couple had three daughters named Jeanne Claudine Odette Lumière Koehler, Juliette Lumière Winckler Gélibert and Francine Lumière Winckler and two sons Édouard and Louis Jean. Among them Louis Jean worked closely with Auguste to create cinematograph.

In 1870, the family moved to Lyon. Here the boys were enrolled at the La Martiniere and impressed their teachers with their brilliance. They were especially good in science. Auguste passed out with a diploma in chemistry. He was also very interested in biology and medicine. Louis also got top honors in mathematics and chemistry.

After graduation, both Auguste and Louis went to work with their father as manager and physicist respectively. As Auguste concentrated on managing the business, Louis focused on improving photographic tools his father was manufacturing.

In 1881, Louis invented the ‘dry plate’ process, later known as 'Etiquette Bleue'. The device simplified the method of developing films and became instantly popular.

Invention of this new technology provided a boost to their father’s business. Very soon they built a new factory in the Monplaisir quarter of the Lyons Suburbs. In 1892, Antoine handed over the rein of his business to his sons and retired.

By 1894, the company under the guidance of Auguste and Louis Lumière began to produce 15,000,000 plates per year and earned a yearly profit of $15 million.

In 1894, Antoine Lumière was invited to Pars to attend an exhibition of Thomas Edison’s newly invented kinetoscope. He was also presented with a length of kinetoscope film by one of Edison’s concessionaires. On returning back, he handed this over to his sons.

Antoine then explained that as the films had readymade market he wanted them to manufacture these. Auguste and Louis agreed. They spent the entire winter experimenting on it. They soon identified two drawbacks of the Kinetoscope and set out to overcome them.

While kinetoscope enabled only one person to watch at a time, they wanted to create something that would allow many people to watch at the same time. Besides, they felt that the machine was too big and wanted to create something more manageable. There was also scope for improvement in animation and projection.

Auguste Lumière began his experiment first. By early 1895, the Lumière brothers invented their own device, which they called ‘Cinématographe’. It was made of copper and wood and weighed around 5 kg.

The machine consisted of a camera combined with a printer and a projector. In it they incorporated a device comparable to that found in sewing machines. This resulted in the intermittent movement of films as opposed to Edison’s continuous movement.