Letters - Inventing the Cinema

'Lumiere' means light, and it is altogether fitting that the Lumiere brothers - Louis and Auguste - were at the forefront of the development of what is the medium of Light - the cinema. Their letters are a unique record of the eruption of cinema on the world stage. Their appeal is not just to film fans, but to anyone interested in technology and in the history of Victorian enterprise.
Written in the heat of the moment, with an eagerness to communicate the thrill of discovery, this is not so much a literary correspondence as a series of excited telephone conversations.
The letters also extend into the twentieth century, ending in 1953 with the recognition that an invention initially perceived as having no commercial potential had become the preeminent art form of the twentieth century.