Crowning success came almost at the same time to Lumiere and Son in Paris and to Paul in London.  They recognized clearly that the new scheme could not become really profitable on a large scale as long as only one person at a time could see the pictures.  Both the well-known French manufacturers of photographic supplies and the English engineer considered the next step necessary to be the projection of the films upon a large screen.  Yet this involved another fundamental change.  In the kinetoscope the films passed by continuously.  The time of the exposure through the opening in the revolving shutter had to be extremely short in order to give distinct pictures.  The slightest lengthening would make the movement of the film itself visible and produce a blurring effect.  This time was sufficient for the seeing of the picture; it could not be sufficient for the greatly enlarged view on the wall.  Too little light passed through to give a distinct image.  Hence it became essential to transform the continuous movement of the film into an intermittent one.  The strip of film must be drawn before the lens by jerking movements so that the real motion of the strip would occur in the periods in which the shutter was closed, while it was at rest for the fraction of time in which the light of the projection apparatus passed through.

Both Lumiere and Paul overcame this difficulty and secured an intermittent pushing forward of the pictures for three-quarters of an inch, that is for the length of the single photograph.  In the spring of 1895 Paul’s theatrograph or animatograph was completed, and in the following year he began his engagement at the Alhambra Theater, where the novelty was planned as a vaudeville show for a few days but stayed for many a year, since it proved at once an unprecedented success.  The American field was conquered by the Lumiere camera.  The Eden Musee was the first place where this French kinematograph was installed.  The enjoyment which today one hundred and twenty-five thousand moving picture theaters all over the globe bring to thirty million people daily is dependent upon Lumiere’s and Paul’s invention.  The improvements in the technique of taking the pictures and of projecting them on the screen are legion, but the fundamental features have not been changed.  Yes; on the whole the development of the last two decades has been a conservative one.  The fact that every producer tries to distribute his films to every country forces a far-reaching standardization on the entire moving picture world.  The little pictures on the film are still today exactly the same size as those which Edison used for his kinetoscope and the long strips of film are still gauged by four round perforations at the side of each to catch the sprockets which guide the film.