Illustrations

September 5, 2015

If cinema meant many things, it also came in many forms. This page documents some of the vast range of moving image technologies and infrastructure from the 1900s to the 1920s in images. Where relevant, entries are matched with a text from the book.

Amateur	Advertising	Cameras	Education
Fire	Light	Movie Theaters	Posters
Projection	Science	Sound	Stereoscopy
Television

Amateur and home cinema

Messter’s Amateur-Kinetograph (1896). This device could be used as a camera and as a projector. From Oskar Messter’s sales catalogue.

Advertisement for Messter’s portable kinetograph with kerosine projection lamp (1897). Translation: “Can be used at any time. Easy to operate. Weight: ca. 15kg. Good pictures guaranteed. Can be projected anywhere. No electric light, no gas, no petroleum, no ether, no oxygen.”

Sketch for a “toy cinema” (1911)

Biofix animated family portrait (date unknown), see text no. 278

Ernemann amateur cinema (1911/12), see text no. 233

Cinéphote animated portraits for the home (1912)

“Pocket cinematograph” (1921)

Kinophot device for viewing animated portraits (ca. 1913). Source: Pascal Fouché

Pathé Baby (1926), see text no. 148

Advertising and Industrial Film

Liesegang automatic advertising slide projector (1907)

Mobile cinema for advertising (1921), see text no. 240

Atrax advertising projector for sidewalks (1921)

Industriefilm suitcase projectors for travelling salesmen (1921)

Duoskop film cabinet for projection in exhibitions and shop floors (1922)

“Capitol” shopwindow projector, Julius Pinschewer, 1925

Cameras

Skladanowsky photographic camera (1897)

Karl Freund with strap-on camera on the set of Der Letzte Mann (1924), see text nos. 226, 229

Two new Mitchell cameras and three pioneering cinematographers in Hollywood 1924. From the left: Günter Rittau (Nibelungen, Metropolis, Blue Angel); Charles Roshes (Rosita, Sunrise), Karl Freund (Golem, Last Laugh, Metropolis).

Fritz Lang with a new Mitchell camera on the set of Metropolis in 1926. It was purchased on Lang’s trip to America in fall 1924.

Education

Classroom equipped for film projection (1912), see text. no. 19

Liesegang projector for schools, 1912, see text nos. 19 and 241

Ernemann projector for schools (1913), see text nos. 19 and 241

Liesegang “Glogoskop” slide projector (1913)

Krupp-Ernemann “Magister” projectors for schools (1925), see text no. 241

Fire

Fireproofing device for movie theater projector (ca. 1926)

Cutting room destroyed by fire (1926)

Light

Projection lamp (1908)

Gloria illuminated signs for cinemas (1912)

Jupiter lamps (klieg lights) for film shoots (1914), see text no. 159

László Moholy-Nagy, Space Light Modulator (1922-1930), see text no. 271

Movie Theaters

Program for the Biophon-Theater Unter den Linden, Berlin (1904). “Projection of talking, singing and other lively photographs.” This theater had ca 250 seats and a daily attendance of ca. 500 people. The program alternated between synchronized music pieces and documentary and scientific films. Shows started at 3pm and operated continuously, each cycle lasting ca. one hour. Spectators could come and go at any time. Approximately 500 biophone theaters existed in Germany by 1913.

Kinematograph Theresia Klein, Vienna Prater (1905)

Advertisement for “Vulkan” air freshening apparatus (1911). The “spray man” was a regular feature in poorly ventilated cinemas in the 1910s. See text no. 67.

Dressing up the cinema facade for Die Geisternacht (1912).

Cinema was often compared to a “vending machine” of visual pleasure (see text no. 7). But it also included vending machines, such as the Sarotti chocolate dispensers on the back of the seats in this image from 1913. A postcard dispenser is also visible to the right.

Feld-Kino (cinema in the field), ca. 1916.

Ufa-Palast am Zoo (1919). The first version of Berlin’s premier picture palace with 1740 seats.

Wanderkino (traveling cinema), 1924

Gloria-Palast, Berlin. This picture palace opened in 1926 with a pantomime by Frank Wedekind and a screening of Murnau’s Tartuffe. It would also house the premier of The Blue Angel in 1930.