Early Cinema
The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial ‘peepshow’ format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater. In the peepshow format, a film was viewed through a small opening in a machine that was created for that purpose. Thomas Edison’s peepshow device, the Kinetoscope, was introduced to the public in 1894. It was designed for use in Kinetoscope parlors, or arcades, which contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time. The first Kinetoscope parlors contained five machines. For the price of 25 cents (or 5 cents per machine), customers moved from machine to machine to watch five different films (or, in the case of famous prizefights, successive rounds of a single fight).
知道技术从最初的peepshow形式进行了进化之后，电影才以一种大众消费的形式出现。在peepshow形式中，一个电影通过通过机器中的小孔进行展现。爱迪生的小孔peepshow极其，Kine，在1894年被公众所认知。 它被设计用于KP，KP只包括少量的机器，只允许一个人去看。 第一个KP包含五个机器。观众从一个机器移到另一个机器看五个不同的电影。
These Kinetoscope arcades were modeled on phonograph parlors, which had proven successful for Edison several years earlier. In the phonograph parlors, customers listened to recordings through individual ear tubes, moving from one machine to the next to hear different recorded speeches or pieces of music. The Kinetoscope parlors functioned in a similar way. Edison was more interested in the sale of Kinetoscopes (for roughly $1,000 apiece) to these parlors than in the films that would be run in them (which cost approximately $10 to $15 each). He refused to develop projection technology, reasoning that if he made and sold projectors, then exhibitors would purchase only one machine-a projector-from him instead of several.
这些Ka以PP为模型创造。在PP中，观众通过个人的耳道，从一个机器移动到另一个去听不同的演讲或音乐片段来听记录的声音。KP以同样的方式工作。爱迪生对于Kine的销售比电影更有兴趣，因此它拒绝升级投影设备。因为如果它做了而且卖了投影设备，那些影院的建立着将只购买一个机器而不是多个机器从他那里。
Exhibitors, however, wanted to maximize their profits, which they could do more readily by projecting a handful of films to hundreds of customers at a time (rather than one at a time) and by charging 25 to 50 cents admission. About a year after the opening of the first Kinetoscope parlor in 1894, showmen such as Louis and Auguste Lumiere, Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins, and Orville and Woodville Latham (with the assistance of Edison’s former assistant, William Dickson) perfected projection devices. These early projection devices were used in vaudeville theaters, legitimate theaters, local town halls, makeshift storefront theaters, fairgrounds, and amusement parks to show films to a mass audience.
然而，这些影院的运营者想去最大化他们的利润。在1894年，showmen 例如 Louis ，AL，TA，CfJ 和 Orvi 和WL 完善了投影设备。这些早期的投影设备被用于杂耍剧院，合法的影院，当地货廊，去展示影片给大众。
With the advent of projection in 1895-1896, motion pictures became the ultimate form of mass consumption. Previously, large audiences had viewed spectacles at the theater, where vaudeville, popular dramas, musical and minstrel shows, classical plays, lectures, and slide-and-lantern shows had been presented to several hundred spectators at a time. But the movies differed significantly from these other forms of entertainment, which depended on either live performance or (in the case of the slide-and-lantern shows) the active involvement of a master of ceremonies who assembled the final program.
1895-1896年投影技术的发明，运动的图片变成了一种亲密的大众消费形式。之前大量的听众在电影院里看精彩的表演。但是现在电影极大的不同于之前那些娱乐形式，之前的娱乐形式依赖于现场表演或者会场司仪的活跃参与。
Although early exhibitors regularly accompanied movies with live acts, the substance of the movies themselves is mass-produced, prerecorded material that can easily be reproduced by theaters with little or no active participation by the exhibitor. Even though early exhibitors shaped their film programs by mixing films and other entertainments together in whichever way they thought would be most attractive to audiences or by accompanying them with lectures, their creative control remained limited. What audiences came to see was the technological marvel of the movies; the lifelike reproduction of the commonplace motion of trains, of waves striking the shore, and of people walking in the street; and the magic made possible by trick photography and the manipulation of the camera.
虽然早期的运营者们按照常规用现场的动作制作电影。电影本身就需要巨大的消耗，预先录制的材料可以和容易被影院复制，参展商很少或没有积极参与。即使早期的参展商修改电影通过将电影和其他娱乐方式混合起来，以至于可以吸引更多的观众。但是他们天才的控制收到了限制。观众先去看的东西是电影带来的科技的惊喜，栩栩如生地再现火车的普通运动，冲击海岸的波浪以及在街上行走的人; 通过特技摄影和相机的操控使魔术成为可能。
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.
锁着投影仪的发明，观众和图像之间的关系变得不再私密。它突然变得公开起来，观众分享他的经历给成百上千的人。 同时观众看的图像也从12英尺的小孔扩展到生活中的比例6到9foot。
