Jean-Aimé LeRoy

Jean-Aimé "Acme" LeRoy (born February 5, 1854 in Bedford, Kentucky , † August 9, 1932 in New York ) was an American inventor and alleged pioneer of cinema history. He claimed to have shown films to the Lumière brothers on February 5, 1894, over a year . This would make him the first to use cinematography .

Life

LeRoy came from a Lyon family. At the age of 16 he began his photography apprenticeship with the famous photographer Thwaites on 1 Chambers Street in New York City . LeRoy had at least one personal encounter with Louis Le Prince . On his 40th birthday, the said film screening is said to have taken place in Herbert Riley's optics store at 16 Beekman Street, Manhattan, in front of 20 to 25 invited guests. In 1894 he allied himself with Eugène Augustin Lauste to found the "Cinematograph Novelty Company". Initially, the entrepreneurs showed everything they could get hold of, from Kinetoscope strips to Lumière film copies. In 1928 he suffered an apoplexy .

There is very little information about his projectors. A first device, which he is said to have built together with the mechanic Henry Brower in 1893, mostly made of wood, had a friction gear for unperforated film. He obtained films from Wordsworth Donisthorpe in England. The metal device, completed on February 3, 1894, was a racket construction , the Marvelous Cinematograph .

literature

• Acme Exchange Company Catalog, 133 Third Avenue, New York NY 1908.
• Society of Motion Picture Engineers. In: Transactions of the SMPE New York 1916 ff.
• Mid-Week Pictorial. Magazine. November 12, 1925, p. 20.
• James R. Cameron: Encyclopedia (of) Sound Motion Pictures. Coral Gables, Florida 1948.
• Herbert Tümmel: From the history of cinematography. In: cinema technology. No. 1, 1957 (VI. Part), p. 23.

Web links

• LeRoy projectors by Soterios Gardiakos (English; PDF file; 2.1 MB)