Eugène Augustin Lauste (17 January 1857 in

Montmartre Montmartre ( , , ) is a large hill in Paris's northern 18th arrondissement of Paris, 18th arrondissement. It is high and gives its name to the surrounding district, part of the Rive Droite, Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for its a ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

– 27 June 1935 in

Montclair, New Jersey Montclair is a Township (New Jersey), township in Essex County, New Jersey, Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated on the cliffs of the Watchung Mountains, Montclair is a commercial and cultural hub of North Jersey and a diverse ...

) was a French inventor instrumental in the

technological Technology is the application of conceptual knowledge to achieve practical goals, especially in a reproducible way. The word ''technology'' can also mean the products resulting from such efforts, including both tangible tools such as ute ...

development of the history of cinema.

Life

By age 23 Lauste had filed 53 French patents. He emigrated to the United States in 1886 and started working at the Edison Laboratories where he met French-born

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

. Lauste occasionally contributed to the development of the leading predecessor to the

motion picture A film, also known as a movie or motion picture, is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since ...

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 ...

, though he was never Dickson's chief assistant. Lauste left Edison in 1892. Lauste also worked on an idea for a

combustible A combustible material is a material that can burn (i.e., sustain a flame) in air under certain conditions. A material is flammable if it ignites easily at ambient temperatures. In other words, a combustible material ignites with some effort a ...

gasoline Gasoline ( North American English) or petrol ( Commonwealth English) is a petrochemical product characterized as a transparent, yellowish, and flammable liquid normally used as a fuel for spark-ignited internal combustion engines. When for ...

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 ge ...

; 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 The Latham Loop is used in film projection and image capture. It isolates the filmstrip from vibration and tension, allowing movies to be continuously shot and projected for extended periods. Invention of the Latham loop is usually credited to fi ...

. (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 Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh and Eighth Avenue (Manhattan), Eig ...

'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 neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to the south and west, and Gravesend to ...

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 s ...

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 sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

; 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 present-day ...

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

sound film A sound film is a Film, 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, bu ...

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 or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

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

Bell Telephone Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, commonly referred to as ''Bell Labs'', is an American industrial research and development company owned by Finnish technology company Nokia. With headquarters located in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey, the compa ...

. 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

PBS History Detectives episode on Lauste

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

Life

See also

References

Sources

External links