Before Hollywood: From Shadow Play to the Silver Screen

Illustrated with black-and-white archival prints, drawings, and photographs From the simple camera obscura of the 1500s to the 17th century’s giant magic lanterns to the early films of Thomas Edison and the Lumicre brothers in the late 1800s, here is an intriguing story of invention and showmanship. Many of the techniques adopted by Hollywood were worked out by tinkerers, lanternists, and magicians in front of shocked and amazed audiences long before the first flickering black-and-white film was ever shown. This fascinating book explains how today’s movies—as well as photographs, special effects, and animation—came to be.

Peppered with first-hand accounts and newspaper reports, excerpts from the notes of early inventors and filmmakers, and descriptions and diagrams of detailed optical gadgets, Before Hollywood provides a window into the world of entertainment before movies were invented. It offers an illustrated tour of the beginnings of technologies that we take for granted today. Sidebars, afterword, timeline, endnotes, bibliography, Internet resources, and index.