1870s in film

The decade of the 1870s in film involved some significant events.

Events

• 1874 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen used his Janssen revolver to photograph the transit of the planet Venus across the Sun.
• 1877 – French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud improved on the Zoetrope idea by placing mirrors at the center of the drum. He called his invention the Praxinoscope. Reynaud developed other versions of the Praxinoscope, too, including a Praxinoscope Theatre (where the device was enclosed in a viewing box) and the Projecting Praxinoscope. Eventually he created the "Théâtre Optique", a large machine based on the Praxinoscope, able to project longer animated strips. In the United States, the McLoughlin Bros. from New York released in 1879 a simplified (and unauthorized) copy of Reynaud's invention under the name "Whirligig of Life".
• 1877–1878 – Thomas Edison's announcement of his phonograph invention inspired Scientific American to suggest combinations with stereoscopic photographs and projection. Wordsworth Donisthorpe replied that his Kinesigraph (patented in 1876) would soon produce moving life-size photographs with the motion of lips and gestures corresponding to the words from the phonograph.
• 1878 – Eadweard Muybridge records his famous chronophotographic series of pictures of the phases of The Horse in Motion , the result of an assignment by railroad tycoon Leland Stanford who wanted to see proof of the real positions of the horse's gait. The pictures had a huge impact, because the recorded positions were very different (and often less gracious) than most people imagined; many drawings and paintings turned out to be incorrect.

Births

Year	Month	Date	Name	Country	Profession	Died
1870	March	13	Henri Étiévant	France	Actor, Director	1953
	May	2	Lewis J. Selznick	US	Producer	1933
1871	March	23	Heinrich Schroth	Germany	Actor	1945
	April	16	Henry Stephenson	US	Actor	1956
	April	21	Jaro Fürth	Austria	Actor	1945
	May	30	Olga Engl	Austria	Actress	1946
	July	7	Richard Carle	US	Actor, Playwright	1941
1872	January	25	Robert McWade	US	Actor	1938
	February	12	Oscar Stribolt	Denmark	Actor	1927
	April	26	William Desmond Taylor	Ireland	Actor, Director	1922
	December	22	Georg Blomstedt	Sweden	Actor	1933
1873	January	7	Adolph Zukor	US	Founder of Paramount Pictures	1976
	March	7	Madame Sul-Te-Wan	US	Actress	1959
	June	10	Vera Lewis	US	Actress	1956
	June	13	Karin Swanström	Sweden	Actress, Director	1942
	July	1	Alice Guy-Blaché	France	Director, Producer, Screenwriter	1968
	November	24	John St. Polis	US	Actor	1946
1874	March	19	Arthur Hoyt	US	Actor	1953
	April	28	Sidney Toler	US	Actor, Writer	1947
	June	2	E. Alyn Warren	US	Actor	1940
	November	13	Henry Kolker	US	Actor, Director	1947
	November	22	Elizabeth Patterson	US	Actor	1966
	November	30	Lloyd Ingraham	US	Actor, Director	1956
1875	January	15	Claude King	UK	Actor	1941
	January	22	D. W. Griffith	US	Filmmaker	1948
	February	26	Emma Dunn	UK	Actress	1966
	March	25	Spencer Charters	US	Actor	1943
	April	4	Samuel S. Hinds	US	Actor, Lawyer	1948
	June	6	J. Farrell MacDonald	US	Actor, Director	1952
	June	11	Gilbert Emery	US	Actor	1945
	September	12	Matsunosuke Onoe	Japan	Actor	1926
	November	10	Maude Eburne	Canada	Actress	1960
	December	8	Frederik Buch	Denmark	Actor	1925
1876	February	26	Amy Veness	UK	Actress	1960
	March	18	Frank Darien	US	Actor	1955
	June	20	Romuald Joubé	France	Actor	1949
1877	June	19	Charles Coburn	US	Actor	1961
	November	8	Robert Homans	US	Actor	1947
1878	January	16	Harry Carey	US	Actor	1947
	April	12	Lionel Barrymore	US	Actor	1954
	May	25	Bill Robinson	US	Actor, Dancer	1949
	June	26	Ernest Torrence	Scotland	Actor	1933
	July	14	Donald Meek	Scotland	Actor	1946
1879	January	1	William Fox	Hungary	Founder of Fox Film Corporation	1952
	January	1	Paul Porcasi	Italy	Actor	1946
	February	12	Urban Gad	Denmark	Director	1947
	June	9	Dudley Digges	US	Actor	1947
	August	15	Ethel Barrymore	US	Actress	1959
	October	15	Jane Darwell	US	Actress	1967
	October	22	Karl Hoblitzelle	US	Movie theater owner	1967
	November	4	Will Rogers	US	Actor, Comedian	1935
	November	15	Lewis Stone	US	Actor	1953
	December	27	Sydney Greenstreet	UK	Actor	1954
	December	27	Robert Greig	Australia	Actor	1958

See also

• Film
• History of film
• Lists of films
• 1870s in music

External links

• List of 1870s films at IMDb
• List of 1870s deaths at IMDb
• List of 1870s births at IMDb