SECOND THOUGHTS: A FRESH LOOK AT BIRT ACRES IN THE LIGHT OF NEW DISCOVERIES

SECOND THOUGHTS: A FRESH LOOK AT BIRT ACRES IN THE LIGHT OF NEWDISCOVERIES

by Deac Rossell

[Prepared in 1998 for a conference at the University of East Anglia, but neverdelivered, as the organizers did not accept the initial proposal. Therefore unpublished.Today (2013) many of the “new” facts are no longer quite new, but I have left the papersubstantially as written since the “new” material has not always been registered insubsequent writing on Acres, Paul, or the period. I have updated the references toMartin Loiperdinger’s book on Ludwig Stollwerck, now long published.]

This paper is divided into two parts.

The first section states some new facts about Birt Acres which have not yet appearedin the British literature, which in some cases are as yet unpublished anywhere, andwhich adds to a revised account of the trajectory of Acres’s career. The second partthen uses the career of Birt Acres as a case study to suggest a theoretical frameworkthat might be applicable to both Acres and his contemporaries; one that might help usilluminate some of the issues surrounding the early film pioneers and make bettersense of their context. My hope here is to suggest a way of constructing a history of thebeginnings of the cinema that avoids summarily closing off the period; a way thatallows a variety of contributors to the establishment of moving pictures to be fullypresent in its story; and a way of providing a structure that both recognizes the contextout of which moving pictures arose and at the same time evaluates individualcontributors with rigorous and illuminating scholarship.

PART I: A FRESH LOOK AT THE WORK OF BIRT ACRES

Some new facts: 1. In the early days of 1895, Birt Acres beganto design a cinematographic camera. Awareof this work, his assistant at the photographicfirm of Elliot & Son introduced him to theyoung electrical engineer Robert WilliamPaul, then making pirate copies of the EdisonKinetoscope and in need of new film subjectsfor the device. As is well known, thispartnership made the first films in Britain inFebruary and March 1895 on the camera thatresulted from their work, but the partnershipwas not long-lasting. When the breakbetween the two partners came, in May 1895,Acres paid Paul, at the latter’s demand, £30for the work Paul had done in manufacturingAcres’ camera in his workshop,and took thecamera away to continue making films.1

2. After making contact with the German chocolate manufacturers Stollwerck &Company of Cologne in Spring of the same year, by June 1895 Acres and his camera

British patent drawing for the Acres camera,

1895

2SECOND THOUGHTS ON BIRT ACRES --- Deac Rossell

were making the first films in Germany at the opening of the Kiel Canal, and atceremonies in Hamburg. In July 1895 Acres concluded a formal contract withStollwerck to supply films, cameras, kinetoscopes, developing and printing services,and other moving picture operations to the chocolate company, and the Acres camera,already patented by Acres in Britain, was patented in Germany by Stollwerck’slongstanding secretary, Paul Müller.2

3. In the summer of 1895Acres began work on designingand building an automatkinetoscope viewer forStollwerck, as promised in hiscontract. Acres sketched hisideas for this apparatus duringcontract negotiations in June.This automat kinetoscope,which Acres called theElectroscope, was a self-contained repeating unit thatwas not a peep show machinelike the Edison kinetoscope orits copies, but instead had asmall early-TV-sized screen a few inches across, and could be viewed by severalpeople at once. Thus, it was neither a peep show device nor a “projector” in theaccustomed use of the term. It did, however, run films made on 35mm celluloid film,and was publicly exhibited by the end of the year in Stollwerck’s automat arcade inCologne, running Acres’ film of the 1895 English Derby and other subjects.3

4. In June 1895 Acres also sketched his own designs for filmprinting, duplicating, and developing apparatus, the earliestrepresentations of such apparatus that we know, intended as anindication of how he would proceed to supply films to Stollwerckunder their new contract. This apparatus, and similarmechanisms, became the basis for his Northern PhotographicWorks in Barnet.4

5. On 6 March 1896 William Friese-Greene, temporarily inpartnership with T. H. Bethall and J. W. Collings, wrote to Acresasking if they could borrow his projector for a demonstration at theOlympia, London, on account of “Our Machine having brokendown...” The team further agreed to pay Acres 5% of theirreceipts if they got the contract, and Friese-Greene specificallyagreed not to interfere with Acres over any question arising fromhis own earlier patents for moving picture apparatus.5

6. On 21 March 1896 Acres opened a public venue for his projection apparatus at 2Piccadilly Mansions in London, and we now have a new eyewitness description of thefilm exhibitions there from a visitor to the shows in May, which reads in part: “Although Ihad in no way raised my demands and expectations, even so I was fully surprised to

The Acres Electroscope viewer of 1895. Two films were

mounted on each reel, one running forward as the other was

simultaneously rewound; when reversed, with mirror C shifted,

the first film rewound while the other was viewed.

The Acres film printer of

June, 1895


find such a little difference with his earlier projections. I will not dispute that the pictureswere somewhat steadier, when the apparatus was run slower, at about 10-12 imagesper second, but at 15 or 16 pictures per second the juddering is exactly the same asearlier......” 6

7. In late 1895 and early 1896, Acres also began working on new film apparatus usingfilm 5 centimeters -- or 50 millimeters -- wide, as promised in one of his Stollwerckcontracts. There is as yet no conclusive account of his practical activity with thisoversized film, although it might have led to a most interesting connection with somelater film work, which is yet to be proved.7

8. Throughout 1895 and into 1896, Acres continued busily to make new films on hisapparatus. A list of most of these films will be, in fact, soon in the English literature inthe revised Volume 1 of John Barnes’ magnificent work The Beginnings of the Cinemain England, forthcoming from the University of Exeter Press. For the purposes of thispaper I would like to point out just a few of these titles. We have known films of BirtAcres for some time which have been given the following titles, taken from the originaledition of Barnes: “Yarmouth Fishing Boats Leaving Harbour”, “Landing at Low Tide”,“Yarmouth Sands” and “Highgate Tunnel, with the Passage of a G. N. R. LuggageTrain”. It now turns out that these titles, and perhaps others, were actually made inpairs, a subject I will return to below; the paired titles, translated from Acres’s Germandistribution lists, are such as: “Fishing Boats Towed out of Harbour” and “FishingBoats Towed Into Harbour”; “Sailboats Leaving Harbour” and “Sailboats Returning toHarbour”; “Express Train Leaving the Station” and “Express Train Leaving a Tunnel”.8

9. From January 1896, first at the Northern Photographic Works, and then at theWhetstone Photographic Works, both principally financed by the Stollwerckorganization, Acres continued to work as a film supplier and printing laboratory until hiscareer came to an end in 1918. The Acres photographic companies were principallyfinanced again by Stollwerck in Germany. When the European Blair Camera Companywent out of business in 1903, it was Acres who picked up their business of supplyingfilms to Maguire & Baucus, and for a while he also supplied films to Charles Urban.9

A brief career trajectory.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, of British parents who died in the American Civil War, BirtAcres spent his youth in America and France before settling in Britain. Moving quicklyfrom the world of painting into photography, he established a studio in the seasideresort of Ilfracombe “for the production of portraits by painting and photography” andbegan to establish a reputation as a contributor to photographic journals and lecturer atphotographic meetings. By 1893 he was a manager for the established firm of Elliotand Son in Barnet, and had patented several photographic devices, including anapparatus for washing prints, one for copying stereoscopic photographs, and one thatrapidly exposed a number of photographic plates, or rapidly exhibited lantern slides.

Acres was some 44 years old when he met the young Robert Paul, aged 27 years, in1896. He had a modest reputation as an exhibiting photographer and as an inventor,10

and when he and Robert Paul began successfully making films in spring 1895, he quithis managerial post at Elliot & Son to devote his full time to a career in the new


medium of moving pictures. If he did this on the basis of a partnership with Paul, withwhom he made a contract in March, 1895, it was a chimera which quickly passed, astheir partnership ended after a few weeks. Acres then found new financial backing fromGermany, and went off to make the first moving picture films in Germany; he continuedhis inventive work designing a new syle of kinetoscope, a projector which gave the firstprivate exhibitions in England, developing and printing apparatus for film11

manufacture, and ultimately an inexpensive small-format movie camera, the Birtac of1898. Opening a business for the coating, perforation, cutting, processing and printingof celluloid films, his Northern Photographic Works was an important early supplier tothe rapidly expanding moving picture world. He spent much of 1896 lecturing onmoving pictures at photographic societies across Britain, and began to manufactureprojection apparatus that was used both domestically and internationally, with knownapparatus in use in New York City and Copenhagen, Denmark. Acres now ran his12

own company (with Stollwerck in the background), and his commitment to movingpictures was firm: he would never return to his earlier still photographic work. If his roadwas not always clear -- he went bankrupt in both 1909 and 1911 -- he remainedconnected with moving picture work until his death in 1918.

PART TWO: SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT BIRT ACRES

A hundred years after the invention of the cinema, we have today a firmlyensconced master narrative of the process of its birth and earliest days. This masternarrative charts the work of pioneering inventors and businessmen whom, it is told,either created the breakthroughs that made moving pictures a reality, or made the mostsubstantial contributions to the dissemination and stability of the new medium acrossEurope and America. While there are still some disputes about their precisecontributions and, more commonly, their relative importance, it is historiographicallyinteresting that the major figures in this narrative are almost exclusively figures wholived far into the later era of the “movies” and were able to tell their stories to inquisitivehistorians. Their longevity also frequently meant that they were able to preservelaboratory or business records supporting (mostly) their own stories. Their names arefamiliar to everyone: Thomas Alva Edison (died 1931), August and Louis Lumière (died1954 and 1948, respectively), Robert William Paul (died 1943), Charles Pathé (died1957), William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (died 1935), Charles Francis Jenkins (died1934), Thomas J. Armat (died 1948), and the pair from Germany whose early disputesare still amongst the least settled in the literature, Max Skladanowsky (died 1939) andOskar Messter (died 1943)

From the lives, work, and memoirs of these men, an initial story of the originsand establishment of moving pictures has been constructed, but it is one that does notreflect accurately or properly the cinematographic activity in the period of invention orthe first years of moving pictures before 1900. We now know, for just one example,that before 1900 Oskar Messter, who bears the sobriquet “Founder of the German FilmIndustry”, played quite a minor role in establishing moving pictures in his nativecountry, and that several other figures were not only quicker to enter the new mediumbut also created, or already owned, larger and more significant commercialestablishments. H. O. Foersterling (retired 1899, died 1903?), for one, was quicker tomarket with projection apparatus that was far more widely used than Messter’s in 1896,and Philipp Wolff (died 1899) created a large multinational company with offices inLondon, Paris, and Berlin that offered, along with its own projection apparatus and a


filmmaking service, “an immense stock of all the films that are worth having from allparts of the film-producing globe”, before it disappeared just after the turn of the13

century. George William de Bedts (last recorded 1902) would be such a figure inFrance, where he was the first person to patent and bring to market a combinationcamera/projector, and was in close contact during the 1890s with Georges Demenÿ,Léon Gaumont, Henri Joly, Louis Lumière and many others. 14

These figures who are not recorded in the master narrative constructed by thefirst film historians are described as “Others” by Joan Wallach Scott, who asserted thatany master narrative “is shown to be not only incomplete but impossible of completionin the terms it has been written. For those master narratives have been based on theforcible exclusion of Others’ stories. They are justifications through teleology of theoutcomes of political struggles” which in their telling legitimize the actions of those whoare included in the narrative, a process she terms “official stories.” 15

In the early 1890s, Birt Acres (died 1918) was anestablished photographer of modest reputation with aresponsible position in a substantial photographic firm;when he quit his job at Elliot’s and began to work full timeat developing moving pictures, he was perhaps the firstperson in the world to take on moving picture work as aprofession, not as an inventor or laboratory scientist, but asa filmmaker, apparatus designer, and materials supplier.He was perhaps the first such person to be fully committedto the new medium, which at this point in its history, Spring1895, hardly existed at all in any form.

There is growing evidence that Birt Acres is one ofthe characters “forcibly removed” from the masternarrative, in large part because it was Robert Paul whoseaccount of the early days of British cinema, and particularlyof the short partnership between himself and Acres, wasquickly in print in one of the earliest film histories and was16

repeated many times by Paul as he was fêted later in lifeby the bustling new industry and its historical committees.Certainly the newly discovered material on Acres is a clearsign that Acres did have his own ideas about moving pictures, ideas that were bothoriginal and inventive. He was capable of bringing these ideas to fruition, and, ingeneral, through 1895 and beyond, we have additional evidence about Acres’scontinuing activity in film and laboratory work. It can no longer be said that the youngelectrical engineer Robert Paul took an incomplete and inarticulate idea brought to himby Acres and transformed it, through his engineering brilliance, into a workableapparatus (no matter that he most likely had some influence on its detailed mechanicaldesign and did the manufacturing work). It can also no longer be said that Acres wasonly a ‘hired cameraman’ for Robert Paul, as he was described in a book brought outby a British publisher in 1997 . And Acres has moved as well from under the shadow17

of Paul’s notorious statement that “in Birt Acres I found a photographer willing to takeup the photography and processing, provided I could supply him with the necessaryplant, which I did early in 1895.” 18

The historian Thomas P. Hughes describes expanding technological systems ashaving a pattern that “can be presented in the phases in which the activity namedpredominates: invention, development, innovation, transfer, and growth, competition,

Birt Acres, about 1895


and consolidation.” Hughes warns that these phases are not just sequential, but that19

they overlap and backtrack, with the inventor-entrepreneurs who predominate in theearly phases of invention and development not only having ”freedom of problem choicebut also the less desirable freedom from the burden of organizational financialsupport.” During the development phase, which is the phase “in which the socialconstruction of technology becomes clear”, they “embody in their invention economic,political, and social characteristics that it needs for survival in the use world.” My20

perspective on this process for the new technology of motion pictures, which hasassembled components of pre-existing artifacts and processes (magic lantern,chronophotography) into an innovation (cinema), is that these early pioneers are thefirst professionals, in the sense that they are the first to enter and define the professionaccompanying the new technology: they begin the process that leads towardsstabilization of the technology and towards closure of its artifacts -- both technologicaland social -- which lays the foundation for its continued existence in the real world.Hughes also notes that “Once innovation occurs, inventor-entrepreneurs tend to fadefrom the focal point of activity”, and if we look at the figures of the master narrative21

again his pattern is clearly visible: Edison was ready to sell out all of his moving pictureinterests by 1900, Lumière was essentially out of the film business except for the22

provision of raw stock after 1899, Skladanowsky ceased exhibiting and making films byspring 1897, Jenkins remained a minor figure in the technical background and turnedto experimenting with television in the 1920s. In the case of Robert Paul, he wound uphis projector manufacturing business voluntarily in 1910 “because it interfered toomuch with my scientific instrument work, which continues...”23

Birt Acres belongs amongst the group of inventor-entrepreneurs whose careersbelong to the development phase of moving picture work. It was their continuedinnovation, their stability and staying power (however successful economically), theircommitment to the new medium to the exclusion of all other possible distractions thatbegan to form the bedrock of a new industry so that it did not become the passing fadthat Edison and many others so famously predicted. In Acres’ case his work was earlyenough to overlap both the invention and development phases, a possibility Hughesindicated, and he was co-present with the linear-derived “firsts” of the figures whodominate the master narrative of film history.

Yet even as Acres struck out on his own as one of the earliest professionals todedicate his life to moving picture work, his career shows many elements consistentwith his earlier photographic work, elements that indicate the continuity of his skills.Here we can usefully apply the concept of the “technological frame” described byWiebe E. Bijker, which I have introduced elsewhere as a useful tool in prying open theactivities of this period. The social groups which influenced the course of moving24

picture work in 1895 and 1896 comprise a varied assortment of optical technicians,mechanical engineers, photographic professionals, magic lantern experts, showmen, artistic promoters, inventors, and scientists. In these early days audiences weredominantly middle class, as were exhibition and demonstration sites, but they alsoranged right across the social scale and included members of both the working classand royalty. Although Acres’s early experience touched on many of the attributes thatcan be ascribed to these groups, he seems to have had a low inclusion in the frame ofmechanical engineers and a high inclusion in the frame of photographic professionals.He seems to have been a rather reluctant mechanical inventor; his camera was clearlyfinished and manufactured at Paul’s urging and with Paul’s collaboration, and hisinnovative kinetoscope-automat was an ingenious idea that came in response to the


specific needs of Ludwig Stollwerck for a self-contained apparatus for his coin-in-slotmechanical arcades. Although achieving some international sales, representation and25

acceptance, Acres never set up a full manufacturing facility for his projection apparatusduring 1896. Instead, although he had made a radical decision to seek his fortune in anew and untried medium, he was most comfortable with the photographic chemistrythat he knew from his prior employment.

His high inclusion in a technological frame of photographic professionals, with allof the conservatism which that implied for the new moving picture medium, shows upas well in his filmmaking work. Several of his subjects are congruous with the ordinarysubjects of still photography and lantern slides (Military Parade, Barnet Fair, The LordMayor’s Show) and othersemphasize speed and movement(The Derby, Boxing Match, HenleyRegatta). But now that we know thatAcres produced many of his films inmatched pairs, as in Fishing BoatsTowed out of Harbour and FishingBoats Towed Into Harbour, orSailboats Leaving Harbour andSailboats Returning to Harbour, wecan directly see the conservativeinfluence of slipping slides for themagic lantern, where, due to thelimitations of the painted orphotographic glass medium, everymotion in one direction was followedby a corresponding motion in theopposite direction. In many of hisearly films, then, Acres wasreplicating (unnecessarily for thenew moving pictures) the normativehabits of lantern slide productionand, subsequently, exhibition.

The busy schedule of lecturesthat Acres maintained through 1896at photographic societies acrossBritain is further evidence of how hemaintained continuity with theintelligent middle-class photographicamateurs of his earlier career. Acres was a somewhat reluctant showman,inattentive to the day-to-daynecessities of serving an anonymouspublic audience, but perhaps more26

comfortable making extraordinaryarrangements to photograph royalty or mount a special royal screening. In his lecturesand demonstrations to the photographic societies he advocated the use of movingpictures not as mere entertainments but as an essential medium for education andinstruction.

“Satz BA” is a list of Acres films available in early 1897. From

Der Komet, Nr. 617, 16 January 1897.


Acres was much more enthusiastic about the chemistry of moving pictures thanabout their mechanics, and with first the Northern Photographic Works and later theWhetstone Photographic Works, he was an essential supplier of printing anddeveloping, along with film coating and perforating services. From the beginning headapted or built much of the production machinery used in this business, where like Elihu Thompson, Elmer Sperry or even George Eastman, his work as an inventor27

tended to concentrate mostly on printing, developing, and celluloid preparationapparatus for use in his laboratory, a clear continuation of his earlier production-oriented work for Elliott & Sons. By 1903, with the closing of the facilities of theEuropean Blair Camera Company, Acres was a principal supplier of laboratory servicesin the United Kingdom, and had picked up, for example, the entire supply of films andprinting services to Maguire & Baucus Ltd., former customers of Blair. 28

At this point, although bankruptcies in both 1909 and 1911 would still face him,Acres had evolved from being an employee of Elliott & Sons to running his ownbusiness in a new industry. He never entered fully into the somewhat madcap hurly-burly of the world of the moving picture showmen before the turn of the century,instead retaining his respectability and serious mien as a professional in the world thathe best understood while the moving picture industry grew into its adolescence andpassed him by. But his contributions at the beginning, and for a decade thereafter,were substantial and innovative, contributions of exactly the kind that the developingmoving pictures needed if they were to find their own footing distinct from photographyand magic lantern work and come to have a lasting role in the new century.29


1. Letter, Birt Acres to Ludwig Stollwerck, 6 August 1895, Stollwerck Archive, Cologne. Reprinted in: Hauke Lange-Fuchs, DerKaiser, der Kanal und die Kinematographie (Schleswig, 1995: Schleswig-Holsteinisches Landesarchiv), p. 42-3.

2. See: Hauke Lange-Fuchs, Der Kaiser, der Kanal und die Kinematographie (Schleswig, 1995: Schleswig-HolsteinischesLandesarchiv); Martin Loiperdinger, Film und Schokolade. Stollwercks Geschäfte mit lebenden Bildern. (Frankfurt a. M.:Stroemfeld), forthcoming 1998 [= KINtop Schriften 5]{published 1999}. UK Patent 10, 474 of 1895. Application 27 May 1895,Issued 2 May 1896. German patent 92 247. Application 25 August 1895, issued 12 June 1897. Many historians have noted the“remarkable similarity” between these two patents, but only in 1995 did Martin Loiperdinger find documentary evidence identifyingPaul Müller as Ludwig Stollwerck’s assistant and copies of his correspondence with the Berlin patent attorney who filed theapplication. Acres’ lawyer in London had provided a full copy of the original London application to Stollwerck at Acres’ request. Allin the Stollwerck Archiv, Cologne.

3. See: Drawings accompanying contract negotiations, Stollwerck Archiv, Cologne; Martin Loiperdinger, Film und Schokolade.Stollwercks Geschäfte mit lebenden Bildern. (Frankfurt a. M.: Stroemfeld), pp. 72-73. Special thanks to Stephen Herbert for aid indeciphering these drawings.

4. ibid.

5. Letter, William Friese-Greene, J.W. Collings & T. H. Bethall to Birt Acres, 6 March 1896, Stollwerck Archiv, Cologne.

6. Letter, Otto Volkmann to Ludwig Stollwerck, 28 May 1896, Stollwerck Archiv, Cologne. Partially reprinted in Hauke Lange-Fuchs, op. cit., p. 48-49; see also Martin Loiperdinger, op. cit., pp. 112-13.

7. On 3 February 1896 Acres and Stollwerck signed a second agreement which modified their contract of 15 July 1895, which setnew prices for kinetoscopes, films, raw film stock, and other items. One line of this contract read: “The price for the proposed new 5 centimeter wide film to be based on the same proportion.” Contract of 3 February 1896, Stollwerck Archiv, Cologne, p. 1.

8. Advertisement of Romain Talbot, Der Komet, Nr. 617 (16 January 1897). This advertisement offered two groups of films, nowidentified as films of Birt Acres (Satz BA) and Esmé Collings (Satz EC). The Acres films were offered at 105.- Marks each at alength of 26 meters, and half-rolls of 13 meters were 70.- Marks. Because of the inclusion of several North American titles in theAcres list (films of Niagra Falls, New York City, Montreal, etc.) the tantalizing prospect arises that Acres took his camera with himon a business trip to the U.S. in late 1895, and made there the first films taken in North America outside Edison’s Black MariaStudio. However, additional confirming evidence has not yet been found, and it is possible that these films were made for Acres bysomeone he sent to America at a later date (but certainly before the end of 1896), a possibility and an expense provided for in hisStollwerck contracts.

9. See Hauke Lange-Fuchs, op. cit., pp. 54-5 & p. 66 n167-8.

10. Acres’s date of birth is variously given as 1852 (death certificate), 1854 (headstone), or 1855 (marriage certificate), but it isclear that he was a generation older than Paul.

11. June 14 at the Lyonsdown Photographic Society, London.

12. For the kineopticon at Tony Pastor’s Theatre in New York City, where it was engaged from 24 August until 17 October, 1896;see Charles Musser: The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York, 1990: Charles Scribner’s Sons), p.161-2. For the kineopticon in Copenhagen, where it was opened by Lauritz Vilhelm Pacht on June 7, 1896, and after an initial runwas used occasionally through 1899, see Marguerite Engberg, Dansk Stumfilm. I: De store år (Copenhagen, 1977: Rhodos), p. 13,and Hauke Lange-Fuchs, Birt Acres. Der erste schleswig-holsteinische Film Pionier (Kiel, 1987: Walter G. Muhlau), pp. 75-79.Given the poor reputation of the Acres screenings in Piccadilly, the longevity and evident success (for the time) of thesescreenings, especially the long run at Tony Pastor’s important vaudeville house in New York, indicates that either Acres improvedhis apparatus after opening in London, or some other factor intervened in the London showings.

13. Amateur Photographer, V. 26, No. 677 (24 September 1897), p. 266. See Deac Rossell, “Jenseits von Messter -- die ErstenBerliner Kinematographen-Anbieter”, in KINtop --Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films 6 (1997; Frankkfurt am Main:Stroemfeld/Roter Stern), pp. 167 - 184, or Deac Rossell “Beyond Messter: Aspects of Early Film in Berlin”, In: Film History, V. 10No. 1 (1998; Sydney: John Libbey & Co.), pp. 52-69, for a full discussion of Messter’s competitors in early cinema. It is also verylikely that Acres had a direct influence on Foersterling’s entry into moving pictures, and that Foersterling’s first model projector wasa copy of the Acres Kineopticon. Foersterling (along with Johann Hamann, a photographer from Hamburg), had signed a secretagreement with Stollwerck in August 1895 to begin making films for Stollwerck with Acres apparatus, so Foersterling clearly hadvery early knowledge of the Acres technology, and probably access to it as well. See above articles.

14. for G. W. de Bedts, see Laurent Mannoni, “George William de Bedts et la commercialisation de la chronophotographie”, In:Michel Lagny, Michel Marie, Jean A. Gili & Vincent Pinel, eds., Les Vingt premières années du cinéma français (Paris, 1995:AFRHC), pp. 39-51.

NOTES


15. Joan Wallach Scott: “History in Crisis? The Others’ Side of the Story”, In: American Historical Review 94, No. 3 (1989), p. 689-90.

16. Frederick A. Talbot: Moving Pictures. How They are Made and Worked. (London, 1912: Heinemann), pp. 36-38 & 65. Thiswidely read book was published in both Great Britain and the United States (by J. B.. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia), and had asecond edition, “entirely re-written”, in 1923, with the passages from Paul unaltered.

17. Ray Phillips, Edison’s Kinetoscope and its Films. A History to 1896. (London, 1997: Flicks Books), p. 69. The full quotationactually reads:“Paul then invented his own camera, and in March 1895 hired Birt Acres to take films for him, thus starting filmproduction in England.” A similar characterisation of Acres is given by Michael Chanan in The Dream that Kicks (London, 1980:Routledge & Kegan Paul), p. 102: “Paul responded to this by studying the problem of the camera and producing one of his own(with Acres’s help).” This passage is unchanged in the second edition of the work (1996), p. 103.

18. Robert W. Paul, “Kinematographic Experiences”, In: Raymond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures andTelevision (Berkeley, 1967: University of California Press), p. 42. This article is reprinted from Volume 27 of the Journal of theSociety of Motion Picture Engineers, November 1936, and is wholly representative of Paul’s many similar public statements aboutAcres. In his private corresondence Paul was even more assertive: “With regard to Mr. Birt Acres early work, I am sure that he hadno experiments in Moving Pictures before he had the camera which I designed and made in 1895.” (Letter of Robert William Paulto Oskar Messter, 5 August 1932, Bundesfilmarchiv, Messter Nachlaß, Akte 551, p. 5.)

19. Thomas P. Hughes: “The Evolution of Large Systems”, In: Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes & Trevor Pinch, eds.: TheSocial Construction of Technological Systems. New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology. (Cambridge/London,1987: MIT Press), p. 56.

20. Hughes, op. cit., p. 62.

21. Hughes, op. cit. p. 66.

22. Edison agreed to sell all of his motion picture interests to the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in April, 1900, forthe sum of $500,000. Harry Marvin of AM&B paid Edison $2,500 for an option to secure this agreement of sale, but AM&B wasthen unable to raise the capital for the purchase. Edison’s film business was a t a low point at this moment: Biograph’s profits forthe first two months of 1900 were greater than Edison’s for the entire year. See Charles Musser: The Emergence of Cinema. TheAmerican Screen to 1907 (New York, 1990: Charles Scribner’s Sons), p. 283.

23. Letter, Robert William Paul to Oskar Messter, 5 August 1932 (Bundesfilmarchiv, Messter Nachlaß, Akte 551), p. 7.

24. Briefly, Bijker’s idea of the technological frame involves “the concepts and techniques employed by a community in its problemsolving”, where problem solving is broadly inclusive so that it encompasses not only what counts for a problem in the first place,but also the strategies available for solving it. So the technological frame becomes “a combination of current theories, tacitknowledge, engineering practice...goals, and handling and using practice.” See Wiebe E. Bijker, “The Social Construction ofBakelite: Toward a Theory of Invention”, In: Wiebe E. Bijker, Thomas P. Hughes, and Trevor Pinch, eds, The Social Constructionof Technological Systems, op. cit., pp. 159-187, esp. pp. 167-74. For the application of Bijker’s concept in early film history, seeDeac Rossell: “Double Think: The Cinema and Magic Lantern Culture”, In: John Fullerton, ed, Celebrating 1895. The Centenery ofCinema (Sydney, 1998: John Libbey), pp. 27-36; and Deac Rossell: Living Pictures. The Origins of the Movies (Albany, 1998:State University of New York Press), Chapter 1, pp. 1-12.

25. In a private letter of August 1895, well after his breakup with Paul but before the very public dispute with him reached its peakin the photographic press, Acres claimed that his connection with Paul was “brought about by a mutual acquaintance who knewthat I was at work on my apparatus...”, which makes eminent common sense. Why else would the introduction of Paul to thisspecific supervisor of a photographic laboratory have been made? Letter of Birt Acres to Ludwig Stollwerck, 6 August 1895,Stollwerck Archiv, Cologne. Reprinted in: Hauke Lange-Fuchs, op. cit., p. 40-1 (facsimilie illustration, p. 42-3). At the same time,Acres’s background was very much in photography and its chemistry, and all of his mechanical work not related directly toproduction processes (developing and printing apparatus) seems to have been undertaken at the request of others: of Paul for thecamera, and of Stollwerck for the kinetoscope-automat and the projector.

26. According to a Mr. Blackburn, the projectionist-operator for Acres’s screenings at the Kineopticon in Piccadilly in Spring 1896,Acres was indifferent to the needs of these screenings, which were ongoing with ever more scratched and worn films, and had onlyshown up at the screenings once in the past fourteen days. Letter of Otto Volkmann to Ludwig Stollwerck, 28 May 1896, StollwerckArchive Cologne. Partially reproduced in Hauke Lange-Fuchs, op. cit., p. 48-9.

27. See Hughes, op. cit., pp. 59-65.

28. Letter of Ernst Searle to Ludwig Stollwerck, 13 August 1903, Stollwerck Archiv, Cologne. Also in Hauke Lange-Fuchs, op. cit.,p. 66 n167.

29. I would like to make it perfectly clear, in the context of the normally disputatious historical community, that I have a very highregard for the work of Robert Paul, probably the most influential figure in early cinema next to Thomas Edison and the Lumièrebrothers, especially for the direct inspiration of his work on Oskar Messter and Georges Méliès, and for the widespread use of hisapparatus throughout Europe, as well as in Britain. The criticisms of Paul, implied or stated, in this paper are not meant to diminish


his reputation, since as I have written elsewhere, early cinema is not a linear phenomenon where supporting the uniquecontributions of Acres means curtailing the reputation of Paul. Rather, it is important to distinguish the separate and discretecontributions of each figure, so that we can obtain a richer and more textured knowledge of early cinema work. It is only throughdoing so that we can begin to seek answers to questions about the origins, evolution and closure of moving picture work that areotherwise hidden behind cults of personality and unproductive historical argumentation.

SECOND THOUGHTS: A FRESH LOOK AT BIRT ACRES IN THE LIGHT OF NEW DISCOVERIES

Documents

Transcript of SECOND THOUGHTS: A FRESH LOOK AT BIRT ACRES IN THE LIGHT OF NEW DISCOVERIES