Featured Image Credit: FootageArchive - Videos From The Past/YouTube / Images By Tang Ming Tung/Getty
The oldest surviving video footage from 1888 has resurfaced and people can't believe it's real.
While you might think that the invention of film is a fairly modern creation, it's easy to forget how far things have come, and how quickly. From the move away from silent movies into technicolor, there's been VHS, DVDs (remember them), and Blu-ray. Still, video has been around for centuries.
The ability to scan graphics can be attributed to Scottish inventor Alexander Bain as early as 1843, and while it would take until 1906 for Augusto Bissiri to transmit a photographic image from one room to another, the world's 'first' video dates back to 1888.
The Guinness Book of Records list Roundhay Garden Scene as the oldest surviving film in existence, with a two-second clip showing people happily frolicking in a garden. Attributed to French inventor Louis Le Prince, this 12 frames per second video breakthrough (although some say it's 7 fps) that used a single-lens camera is an important piece of history.
The people in Roundhay Garden Scene are credited as Harriet Hartley, Adolphe Le Prince, Joseph Whitley, and Sarah Whitley, with Adolphe Le Prince being the last known survivor but passing away all the way back in 1901.
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Roundhay Garden Scene has resurfaced in a Reddit thread, with many unable to believe it's real. Despite its simplistic 'plot', this could be regarded as the first movie ever.
One fan said: "I love this so much like he just gathered his family and told them to idk spin around do whatever???"
Loving this bygone era, someone else added, "And not a cell phone in sight, people lived in the moment," and another joked, "That was the "Avengers: End Game" of 1888."
Someone else concluded: "The reboot of this looks crazy."
Le Prince's story takes a dark turn, as conspiracy theorists think he was murdered by Thomas Edison. He invented a moving picture camera before Edison, but ahead of being able to demonstrate it in the USA, he was last seen boarding a train in France and vanished without a trace.
It gets even stranger when Adolphe (seen in Roundhay Garden Scene) testified against Edison but was later found with a gunshot wound in his head.
Roundhay Garden Scene has been preserved over the years, with the Science Museum in London creating a photographic glass plate copy of 20 surviving frames from the original negative in 1930. Still, many don't even know it exists.
There's also been a lot of debate about whether it can truly be classed as the world's first film, which was discussed in the 2015 documentary called The First Film.
It's wild to look back through the history of cinema and remember that 100 years ago in 1924, we got the first film adaptation of Peter Pan. It's been a whopping 85 years since The Wizard of Oz, 52 years since The Godfather, and 30 years since The Shawshank Redemption. Looking at how big the movie industry is, it's amazing to think it all started with Roundhay Garden Scene.
