Posts Tagged: "filmmakers"

Today, copyright drives innovation in the creative industries and in other industries as well, providing tremendous economic benefits to our economy. The outputs of the creative industries serve as the inputs that spur the creation of many innovative goods and services. Authors collaborate with technology partners not only to distribute their works, but often to create them. Sometimes storytelling itself leads to scientific discoveries and technological innovation. More and more frequently, the presumed distinction between creators and innovators is vanishing as individuals and firms simultaneously generate creative works and innovative technology.

The history of film is a long one that, by some accounts, extends as far back as the early 1700s and the discovery by German physicist Johann Heinrich Schulze that silver salts react to light exposure by becoming darker in color. By the late 1800s, celluloid film had appeared and the ability to record motion pictures through a camera had become a reality. Indeed, it was none other than George Eastman, who in 1889 perfected the first commercial transparent roll film, one year after the name “Kodak” first began to be used to market his cameras. It was the Eastman flexible film advancement that made it possible for the development of Thomas Edison’s motion picture camera in 1891. Edison called his first generation picture camera a “Kinetoscope,” after the Greek words “kineto,” which means “movement,” and “scopos,” which means “to watch.” Edison filed a patent application on the Kinetoscope on August 24, 1891, and the patent ultimately issued on August 31, 1897.