Louis Lumière

The recorded working language is French. Places of work recorded in the authority are Paris. Employment is recorded with Société Lumière. Work by Louis Lumière is recorded in the collections of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, J. Paul Getty Museum and CNC French Film Archives. Distinctions recorded are Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour, National Inventors Hall of Fame, star on Hollywood Walk of Fame and Elliott Cresson Medal.

• Birth Name — Louis Jean Lumière • Birthplace — Besançon, France • Place of death — Bandol, France • Relatives — Auguste Lumière (brother) • Significant Awards — * Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour (1939) • star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (1960) • Significant Projects — cinematograph

Lumière was one of four children of Claude-Antoine Lumière, a photographer and painter, and his wife Jeanne-Joséphine (née Costille). At the Martinière Technical School he gained highest marks in his class.

• Illustration — Louis Lumière, examining film (1935) At age 17, Lumière invented a new process for film development using a dry plate. This process was significantly successful for the family business, permitting the opening of a new factory with an eventual production of 15 million plates per year. Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope inspired his and his brother's subsequent work on the cinematograph. Louis Lumière is most often associated with his brother, Auguste Lumière, under the name of the Lumière brothers. This comparison is a little excessive with regard to the invention of the cinematograph, since in reality, Auguste failed in his attempt to manufacture the first machine and passed it to his brother who made the invention succeed. On the other hand, Louis was also the director of all the first animated photographic views of the Lumière Society, which Auguste sometimes attended only as an amateur actor (Le Repas de bébé, La Pêche aux poissons rouges, Démolition d'un mur, etc.). But the contract signed between the two brothers provided that they be systematically associated, both morally and financially, in all their work and discoveries.

Louis Lumière is recorded as inventor, engineer, photographer, entrepreneur and chemist.