ABSTRACT

This 1867 document, akin to a patent application for the US Patent Office, is among the first to describe processes for producing both motion and color photography. It precedes by 20 years Edison’s 1888 kinetograph/kinetoscope design, the earliest working prototype of cinema. Its author is Charles Cros, who also outlined a phonograph system in 1877, a few months before Edison displayed his working phonograph. Cros is mostly known as a poet, fiction writer and playwright associated with members of the French Symbolist and Decadent movements (Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam). Yet he was an accomplished technician and inspired media innovator who deserves reconsideration in media history. Evidence of his status comes for instance from his close collaboration with Jules-Adrien Carpentier, the very engineer the Lumière Brothers tasked with constructing their Cinématographe camera. Sent to and received by the French Academy of Sciences, this document is in three parts. The first describes with prescient specificity the photographic synthesis of motion. The second offers several ways of achieving the photographic synthesis of color using filters and projection (rather than pigment and print, as later achieved in the 1890s). The last and more cryptic section concerns an ambitious theory of perception. Unpublished in French until 1970, this document will be of wide interest to scholars of media history, cinema and photography studies, literary studies, and modernist studies. The introductory essay makes a strong case for rehabilitating Charles Cros as a key inceptor of modern audiovisual media.

摘要

这份 1867 年的文件，类似于美国专利局的专利申请，是最早描述动态和彩色摄影制作过程的文件之一。它比爱迪生 1888 年的电影放映机/放映机设计早了 20 年，这是最早的电影工作原型。它的作者是查尔斯·克罗斯，他还在 1877 年概述了一个留声机系统，比爱迪生展示他的留声机早几个月。克罗斯主要以诗人、小说作家和剧作家的身份而闻名，与法国象征主义和颓废运动（亚瑟·兰波、保罗·魏尔兰、奥古斯特·维利尔斯·德·艾尔-亚当）的成员有关。然而，他是一位成功的技术人员和鼓舞人心的媒体创新者，值得在媒体历史上重新考虑。例如，他与 Jules-Adrien Carpentier 的密切合作证明了他的地位，电影摄影机。该文件由法国科学院发送和接收，分为三部分。第一个具有先见之明的特异性描述了运动的摄影合成。第二种方法提供了几种使用滤镜和投影（而不是颜料和印刷品，如后来在 1890 年代实现的）来实现颜色的摄影合成的方法。最后一个更神秘的部分涉及一个雄心勃勃的感知理论。这份文件直到 1970 年才以法语出版，它将引起媒体史、电影和摄影研究、文学研究和现代主义研究的学者们的广泛兴趣。这篇介绍性文章为恢复查尔斯·克罗斯作为现代视听媒体的关键先驱者提供了强有力的理由。