INVENTOR OF THE CAMERA.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 655, 2 August 1921, Page 9

INVENTOR OF THE CAMERA.

DIES IN POVERTY. Who is the inventor of the cinema? A certain Mr Friese Greene. You will not find the name in “Who’s Who,” or similar works of reference (writes a London correspondent, under date. May 12). Mr Greene died in comparative poverty, after a life of terrible struggle with ill-fortune and debt, last week., He fell -lead in London while addressing a gathering of people interested in the cinema industry. His inversion made millions for other people ; it cost him £20,000 and a lift? of poverty. A Bristol Blueeoat boy of Clifton School, Mr Greene was born in 1855.. >fe always had a mechanical bent, and in 1889 invented a camera for Hiking moving pictures. At this time ho hud a photographic business in Piccadilly, a Mr Mortimer Evans being associated with him. Later in the year Mr Evans sold his share of the invention to Mr Friese Greene for £2OO. The patent was granted in May, 1890. Mr Greene took his first motion picture at Hyde Paik Cot nei., the negative being on sensitised paper. The pictures were shown in the Town Hall, demon-Grating the commercial possibilities of cinema photography. Later Mr Greene devised the celluloid fi'ms, with perforated edges, but few' people were Interested, and none realised■„ the commercial possibilities of the patent. By this time Mr Friese Greene had spent £IO.OOO. He was deeply in debt. In 1390 he was sent to prison for non-payment of a debt, and—his home was sold up. Gettingmore money, he continued his experiments, and produced tire first projector,' or lantern, 'making it possible to show the moving pictures on a screen. A judgment of tie p,em~ Count of .the United States p.'jvod Mr Friese Irene’s claim to be the pioneer in' inventing the moving picture camera. But to the end be made no money by the invention. It was nc> until December, 1915 that the c.nema trade, with 6000 pictures palaces •n Britain and 18,000 in the United States, did anything for the man who made their industry possible. They subscribed £ISI 0s 3d for tire unhappy inventor, which tided him over a bad peiiccl. Soon alter Ire secured a position with, a colour-photo-graphic company,- which he held until his death last week. Mr Greene will loem largely in the nooks of reference fifty years hei.ee. apresent he is among the deserving unknown.