Q: How did people first learn about film?
The very idea of film was first presented to the public at the 1889 Paris Expo by George Eastman.
The inventor stumbled upon the discovery of film a year earlier when his camera shutter clicked, making a loud clacking noise that sounded like "kodak". The sound translation was thus chosen for the name of the now widely popular household film brand Kodak.
Four years later at the 1893 Chicago Expo, a clever marketing campaign centered on female models dressed in the American company's signature mustard yellow color was remembered as the most eye-catching moment of the Expo.
A new type of photosensitive film and a device that was able to show a succession of photos was later developed by Kodak and exhibited at the 1900 Paris Expo. Kodak went on to invent a primitive version of colored film, which it showcased at the 1915 Panama Expo, bringing imaging technology to a whole new level.
Finally, colored photographs as we know them today were shown by Kodak at the 1939 New York Expo.
Q: At which Expo was the public invited to their first screening?
The first public premiere of a movie was at the 1915 Panama Expo, where 60 movie-reels were arranged in one exhibition hall. The length of the film needed to play the movie totaled 1 million feet in length.
It was created by Thomas Edison, who combined Eastman's previous invention of photosensitive film and French photographer tienne-Jules Marey's camera prototype, which was able to show a series of photos one after the other, to make the film.
The movie, however, was nothing like the ones we are familiar with today as the pictures were only available in black and white and there was no audio.
Though viewers had to strain to interpret the exaggerated actions of the actors to understand the movie, they were very excited about the premiere.
