POSTHUMOUS HONOUR

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 5, 6 July 1921, Page 5

POSTHUMOUS HONOUR

CINEMA INVENTOR'S TRAGIC

HISTORY

DIED A POOR MAN.

(PROS OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT.)

LONDON, 13th May.

There has been no more striking illustration of the fate which often befalls the actual inventor of a successful commercial article than in the story of the latter days of Mr. Friese Greene, the inventor of the moving pictures, who fell dead at a public meeting a few days ago. To him millions all over the world owe their cinema entertainment, thousands owe their fortunes, and hundreds the fact that they are among the richest men in their country, but he himself ended his life- as a poor man, after experiencing many harrowing vicissitudes. The meeting at which he died so tragically was called to discuss the muddle of' the film industry through over-production of the pictures, of which he was the original inventor. He had come up specially from Brighton, and had complained of feeling tired and weary. But the subject upon which he had spent his life called him to his feet, and he had just finished a powerful plea for unity among all sections of the industry when he fell dead. A Bristol Bluecoat boy, of Clifton School, he was , born in 1855. He was always fond of mechanics, but he did not produce any invention of commercial value until 1889, when he invented a camera for taking moving pictures, first upon photographic glass plates. At that time he had a photographic business in Piccadilly, but he spent more time, in his workshop than in the studio. He registered his idea, and on 10th May, 1890, he was granted the patent for which he sought. The photographic world received'-the invention with some incredulity, and the Optical and, Magic Journal called it a. startling novelty. THE FIRST MOTION PICTURE. ' In a long story the Evening News tells that in the November of 1890, Mr. Greene went with his camera to Hyde Park Corner, and there . took the first motion'picture in the world., 1 The negative used was of sensitised paper, but there was no 1 machine which would show a moving photograph. The actual pictures taken were, however, shown 1 in the Town Hall, Chester, before a photographic' society. So Friese Greene set to work to invent a new negative. He bought some "dope" from a Birmingham firm, reduced it, clarified it, rolled it through a small machine like a mangle, and made the first celluloid film with perforated edges. , Without these no strips of film could be used. Still no recognition came to him. Nobody was eager about the new invention. ' None but the inventor could see its commercial possibilities. He saw that it might be of very great value in war. He wrote to the War Office at once, and he was authorised to go to the Isle of Wight on behalf of the Wai' Office to make experiments with his camera in takiug moving pictures for one day at a fee of £5 55., The next y week he sent in a .report and the results of his work, and he'said that if used from 1 a balloon the moving-picture camera would be a valuable: weapon in war. No answer to that report and suggestion was ever received'from the War Office. __ PRISON FOR DEBT. j By now he had spent £10,000 in what his friends. asserted was the pursuit of a. will o' the wisp- His photographic business declined; he was deeply in debt, and by the end pf the year was sent to prison for non-payment: In February, 1891, his home, and practically all his earliest apparatus used for his experiments, v.as-sold by auction by order of the sheriff to pay his debts. The earliest apparatus was dispersed, and has never been traced. Neither imprisonment nor loss of his home daunted him. Getting together more money, 'he.continued his experiments; this time in Holborn, and there, as Mr. W. 1 Day relates, he reproduced the first lantern or projector which showed his pictures on the screen.. It was demonstrated before the Supreme Court of the United States, when some years ago an investigation was made into the mo-tion-picture trUßt of' that time, that "W. Friese Greene, an Englishman,'* was undoubtedly the inventor of the moving-picture camera. Though he never reaped any reward from his inventions, lie still worked, striving to; get colour-photogiaphy perfect, up to 1914. In 1899 he, patented a colour system which provided for three-colour pictures, but it was a failure. In 1905 he tried another method which promised success, only to disappoint. FOUND IN POVERTY. So poor did he become that in December, 1915, when Mr. Pay visited him at Brighton, he found nothing in the house and the inventor in actual want. Leaving a few pounds, Mr. Day returned to London and opened a relief fund. ' Members t of the film trade subscribed £131 0a 2d, which tided the inventor over difficulties^ Eventually he was offered a post with a colour photographic company, and this he held at the time of his death.. "Unknown, unrecognised, always struggling to bring the moving picture to perfection, he died amid those, who owed to his genius the industry in, which they are engaged; pleading with them'with his last breath. An old and broken man, worn out with his unrewarded work for the industry, he begged them to practise unity in their work of straightening out the tangle into which the picture world has got." '.>-