Eugène Augustin Lauste (17 January 1857 in

Montmartre Montmartre ( , ) is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement. It is high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Right Bank. The historic district established by the City of Paris in 1995 is bordered by Rue Ca ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

– 27 June 1935 in

Montclair, New Jersey Montclair () is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated on the cliffs of the Watchung Mountains, Montclair is a wealthy and diverse commuter town and suburb of New York City within the New York metropolitan area. ...

) was a French inventor instrumental in the

technological Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

development of the

history of cinema The history of film chronicles the development of a visual art form created using film technologies that began in the late 19th century. The advent of film as an artistic medium is not clearly defined. However, the commercial, public scree ...

. By age 23 he held 53 French patents. He emigrated to the United States in 1886 where he worked as an assistant to French-born

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a British inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison. Early life William Kennedy Dickson was born on 3 August 1860 in ...

at the Edison Laboratories. Lauste contributed to the development of the leading predecessor to the

motion picture A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmosphere ...

projector, the

Kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...

, an

invention An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a machine, product, or process for increasing efficiency or lowering cost. It may also be an entirely new concept. If an ...

for which Edison would claim credit. Lauste left Edison in 1892. Lauste also worked on an idea for a

combustible A combustible material is something that can burn (i.e., ''combust'') in air. A combustible material is flammable if it ignites easily at ambient temperatures. In other words, a combustible material ignites with some effort and a flammable mat ...

gasoline Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic c ...

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

; he did develop a working model in the 1890s but gave up when told that such a noisy device would never be widely used. He then worked with Major Woodville Latham, for whom he engineered the

Eidoloscope The Eidoloscope was an early motion picture system created by Eugene Augustin Lauste, Woodville Latham and his two sons through their business, the Lambda Company, in New York City in 1894 and 1895. The Eidoloscope was demonstrated for members of ...

and assisted with the design of the Latham loop. (Later, Dickson would credit Lauste with the loop's invention.) The Eidoloscope was demonstrated for members of the press on 21 April 1895 and opened to the paying public on 20 May, in a lower Broadway store with films of the Griffo-Barnett prize fight, taken from

Madison Square Garden Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsylv ...

's roof on 4 May. Thanks to the Latham loop inside the camera, the entire fight could be continuously shot on a single reel of film. He held regular displays of the pictures that summer in a

Coney Island Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn, Manhattan Beach to its east, L ...

tent. He joined the American Biograph Company in 1896 and remained there for four years before moving to Brixton, England. In 1904 he prepared his first

sound-on-film Sound-on-film is a class of sound film processes where the sound accompanying a picture is recorded on photographic film, usually, but not always, the same strip of film carrying the picture. Sound-on-film processes can either record an analog ...

model. On 11 August 1906 he (along with Australian Robert R. Haines and Briton John S. Pletts) applied for a British

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

; their application was granted patent No. 18057 in 1907 for "a process for recording and reproducing simultaneously the movements or motions of persons or objects and the sounds produced by them," i.e., a strip of 35 mm

celluloid Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary ...

film containing both image frames and a sound strip. In 1911 he exhibited a

sound film A sound film is a motion picture with synchronization, synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decad ...

in the United States, possibly the first-ever American showing of a movie using sound-on-film technology. Before he could market his system more widely, though,

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

intervened. From 1928 until his death, Lauste was a consultant for

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

. With his wife, Melanie, he had a son, Emile, and two stepsons, Clement and Harry E. LeRoy.

References

Sources

*Eyman, Scott (1997). ''The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930''. New York: Simon & Schuster (chapter 1 availabl
online
. *

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lauste, Eugene 1857 births 1935 deaths 19th-century French inventors French emigrants to the United States

See also

References

Sources

External links