相傳1872年，美國(guó)一個(gè)酒店里，Muybridge和別人打賭馬在奔跑時(shí)是否有四個(gè)蹄子都騰空的時(shí)候……

Edward Muybridge, attempted to settle a $25, 000 bet over whether the four feet of a galloping horse ever simultaneously left the ground. He arranged a series of 24 cameras alongside a racetrack to photograph a galloping horse. Rapidly viewing the series of pictures produced an effect much like that of a motion picture. Muybirdge’s technique not only settled the bet (the feet did leave the ground simultaneously at certain instances) but also photography.

后來(lái)發(fā)生的事情大家都知道了，Muybridge賭贏了，順便還促成了電影的發(fā)明。

Instead of 24 cameras taking one pictures in rapid order, it was Thomas Edison and his assistant, William Dickson, who finally developed what might have been the first practical motion-picture camera and viewing device, Edison was apparently trying to provide a visual counterpart to his recently invented phonograph.

Dickson后來(lái)改進(jìn)了這個(gè)設(shè)備，成就了大名鼎鼎的Kinetoscope，甚至為了展示這個(gè)機(jī)器還給它拍了一個(gè)介紹短片。

但是，問(wèn)題來(lái)了，這樣的設(shè)備同一時(shí)間只能讓一個(gè)人看，遠(yuǎn)沒(méi)有讓很多人同時(shí)看獲益多，怎么辦呢？

With the advent of projection, the viewer's relationship with the image was no longer private, as it had been with earlier peepshow devices such as the Kinetoscope and the Mutoscope, which was a similar machine that reproduced motion by means of successive images on individual photographic cards instead of on strips of celluloid. It suddenly became public — an experience that the viewer shared with dozens, scores, and even hundreds of others. At the same time, the image that the spectator looked at expanded from the minuscule peepshow dimensions of 1 or 2 inches (in height) to the life-size proportions of 6 or 9 feet.

對(duì)了，就是投影技術(shù)，真正讓電影面向大眾，于是就有了現(xiàn)代電影的雛形。

1894年William Dickson進(jìn)行了有聲電影的嘗試。

1895年，最早的電影特技問(wèn)世。

這一個(gè)個(gè)電影史上的里程碑造就了我們今天豐富多彩的電影。

雖然有關(guān)電影的閱讀文章考到的頻率不高，但是只要一出現(xiàn)還是會(huì)難倒一大片同學(xué)，所以大家還是要多積累一些相關(guān)的背景知識(shí)和詞匯噢。

TPO中相關(guān)的文章有TPO-2-Early Cinema，TPO-12-Transition to Sound in Film，還有歷年多次考到的真題The Early History of Motion Pictures.