Page 160 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

Expanded Media - and the MediaPlex 160/206
Charles-Émile Reynaud: Théâtre Optique 1887 (Optical Theatre - front projection (1888)
Charles-Émile Reynaud: Théâtre Optique 1887. In the welter of activity in the nascent moving-picture adventures of the late 19th century, it must be Reynaud who is credited with the first animated moving pictures - first cartoons in his Praxinoscope of 1877, then by 1892, his motion-picture Pauvre Pierrot. By 1887 he had created his Théâtre Optique at the Musée Grévin in Paris. The projected animations in his theatre kept audiences enthralled from 1892 through to 1910, when it was obvious that the photographic cinematograph, not simply animated paintings, was what audiences wanted. However, Reynaud’s work was an important step in establishing the precedent for a show that comprised projected images rather than singers, magicians and chorus-girls. in 1907, Reynaud made some experiments in stereo-animations, but eventually gave up his theatre, like Melies, destroying his equipment. He died in a hospice on the Seine - the inventor of the cinema, and maker of over 30 films.
Innovations in motion-picture media come thick and fast as we enter the fin de siecle. Reynaud was the inventor of the Praxinoscope (1877), and developed his Théâtre Optique a decade later, to showcase this and other innovations involving magic lanterns and animated images. He made and showed Pauvre Pierrot - what is purportedly the first animated film at the Musée Grevin in 1892, and ran a regular show there, called the Théâtre Optique until 1900. But - in parallel to Georges Méliès - his luck ran out, audiences forsook his Théâtre and took up the cinema - and by 1910 he dejectedly threw all his equipment and stage props into the Seine, dieing in a hospice there in 1918.”
Reynaud’s inventions demonstrated the potential commercial possibilities of projected moving pictures AND he demonstrated the potential of animated cartoons with his Pauvre Pierrot and other animated films: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4FrX3-XUbY In his shows at the Théâtre Optique Reynaud engineered the birth of motion pictures AND animated cartoons AND set a precedent for the Cinemas that were to appear in the 20th century.