Auguste and Louis Lumière were the sons of Antoine Lumière, a painter and pioneer photographer who founded a factory in Lyons, France, to manufacture photographic gelatin dry-plates in 1882. The brothers were born in Besanìon, France, August on October 19, 1862, and Louis on October 5, 1864. The family business gave them a natural interest in photography and, working as a team, they made important contributions to both still photography and motion pictures, as well as other scientific endeavors. But it is as the inventors of the modern cinema that the Lumières are perhaps best known.

Inspired by Thomas Alva Edison's kinetoscope, the brothers set out to develop an improved film projection system. In February 1895, they took out a patent on their cinÄmatographe, an apparatus that not only took pictures but also later projected them. Using a claw movement that advanced the frames...