Editing William Friese-Greene (section)

==Cinematic inventor==
===Experiments with magic lanterns===
In Bath he came into contact with [[John Arthur Roebuck Rudge]]. Rudge was a scientific instrument maker who also worked with electricity and [[magic lantern]]s to create popular entertainments.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.victorian-cinema.net/rudge |title=John Arthur Roebuck Rudge |access-date=29 December 2017}}</ref> Rudge built what he called the Biophantic Lantern, which could display seven photographic slides in rapid succession, producing the illusion of movement.<ref>{{Cite web 
|url=http://www.cinematheque.fr/fr/catalogues/appareils/collection/lanterne-de-projectionap-94-33.html |title=The Biophantic Lantern |website=Catalogue des appareils cinématographiques de la Cinémathèque française et du CNC |access-date=29 December 2017}}</ref> It showed a sequence in which Rudge (with the invisible help of Friese-Greene) apparently took off his head.<ref name=":4">{{Cite journal |last=Domankiewicz |first=Peter |date=25 November 2024 |title=William Friese-Greene & The Art of Collaboration |journal=Early Popular Visual Culture |volume=22|issue=3 |pages=218–247 |doi=10.1080/17460654.2024.2428487 |doi-access=free }}</ref> Friese-Greene was fascinated by the machine and worked with Rudge on a variety of devices over the 1880s, various of which Rudge called the Biophantascope.<ref>{{Cite journal |title=Collection Will Day: les débuts du cinéma anglais |journal=1895, revue d'histoire du cinéma |volume=1997 |pages=162, 163}}</ref> Moving his base to London in 1885, Friese-Greene realised that glass plates would never be a practical medium for continuously capturing life as it happens. Hence he began experiments with the new Eastman paper roll film, made transparent with castor oil, before turning his attention to experimenting with [[celluloid]] as a medium for motion picture cameras.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Celluloid and photography, part 3: The beginnings of cinema |date=17 November 2012 |url=https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/celluloid-and-photography-part-3-the-beginnings-of-cinema/ |publisher=[[National Science and Media Museum]] blog |access-date=1 May 2020}}</ref>

===Movie cameras===
{{multiple image
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 | image1 = Hyde Park, London (William Friese-Greene, 1889–1890).webm
 | image2 = King's Road (William Friese-Greene, 1890).webm
 | footer = Moving images captured by Friese-Greene at [[Hyde Park, London|Hyde Park]] (left) and [[King's Road]] (right)
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In 1888, Friese-Greene had some form of moving picture camera constructed, the nature of which is not known. On 21 June 1889, Friese-Greene was issued patent no. 10131 for a motion-picture camera, in collaboration with a civil engineer, Mortimer Evans.<ref name=":4" /> It was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using paper and celluloid film. An illustrated report on the camera appeared in the British ''Photographic News'' on 28 February 1890. On 18 February, Friese-Greene sent details of the camera to [[Thomas Edison]], whose laboratory had begun developing a motion picture system, with a peephole viewer, later christened the [[Kinetoscope]]. The ''Photographic News'' report was reprinted in ''[[Scientific American]]'' on 19 April.<ref>Marta Braun, 1992. ''Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904)'', p. 190, Chicago: University of Chicago Press {{ISBN|0-226-07173-1}}''';''' David Robinson, 1997. ''From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film'', p. 28, New York and Chichester, West Sussex, Columbia University Press, {{ISBN|0-231-10338-7}}</ref> In 1890 he developed a camera with Frederick Varley to shoot [[Stereoscopy|stereoscopic]] moving images. This ran at a slower frame rate, and although the 3D arrangement worked, there are no records of projection.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Zone |first1=Ray |title=Stereoscopic Cinema and the Origins of 3D Film, 1838–1952 |date=2014 |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=9780813145891 |page=59 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UXTAAgAAQBAJ&q=William+Friese-Greene+stereoscopic&pg=PA59}}</ref> Friese-Greene worked on a series of moving picture cameras into the early 1890s, but although many individuals recount seeing his projected images privately, he never gave a successful public projection of moving pictures{{fact|date=February 2025}}. Friese-Greene's experiments with motion pictures were to the detriment of his other business interests and in 1891 he was declared [[bankrupt]]. He had sold the rights to the 1889 moving picture camera patent for £500 to investors in the City of London. The renewal fee was never paid and the patent lapsed.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Breverton |first1=Terry |author-link=Terry Breverton |title=Breverton's Encyclopedia of Inventions: A Compendium of Technological Leaps, Groundbreaking Discoveries and Scientific Breakthroughs that Changed the World |date=2012 |publisher=Hachette |isbn=9781780873404 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VepgBQAAQBAJ&q=William+Friese-Greene+chronophotographic+patent&pg=PT418}}</ref>

===Colour film===
Friese-Greene's later exploits were in the field of colour in motion pictures. From 1904 he lived in Brighton where there were a number of experimenters developing still and moving pictures in colour. Initially working with [[William Norman Lascelles Davidson]], Friese-Greene patented a two-colour moving picture system using prisms in 1905. He and Davidson gave public demonstrations of this in January<ref>{{Cite book |title=Moving Pictures |last=Talbot |first=Frederick |publisher=William Heinemann |year=1912 |location=London |pages=295}}</ref> and July 1906<ref>{{Cite news |title=Novelties at the Convention |date=2 August 1906 |work=Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette}}</ref> and Friese-Greene held screenings at his photographic studio.<ref name=":2"/><ref>{{Cite journal |date=28 December 1906 |title=Cinematography in Colours |journal=British Journal of Photography|pages=1033}}</ref>

He also experimented with a system which produced the illusion of true colour by exposing each alternate frame of ordinary black-and-white film stock through two or three different coloured filters. Each alternate frame of the monochrome print was then stained red or green (and/or blue). Although the projection of prints did provide an impression of colour, it suffered from red and green fringing when the subject was in rapid motion, as did the more popular and famous system, [[Kinemacolor]].

In 1911, [[Charles Urban]] filed a lawsuit against Harold Speer, who had purchased rights in Friese-Greene's 1905 patent and created a company 'Biocolour', claiming that this process infringed upon the [[Kinemacolor]] patent of [[George Albert Smith (filmmaker)|George Albert Smith]], despite the fact that Friese-Greene had both patented and demonstrated his work before Smith. Urban was granted an injunction against Biocolour in 1912, but the Sussex-based, racing driver [[Selwyn Edge]] funded an appeal to the High Court. This overturned the original verdict on the grounds that Kinemacolor made claims for itself which it could not deliver. Urban fought back and pushed it up to the House of Lords, which in 1915 upheld the decision of the High Court.<ref>{{Cite book |title=Cinema-by-Sea |last=Fisher |first=David |publisher=Terra Media |year=2012 |location=Brighton |pages=141–146}}</ref> The decision benefited nobody. For Urban it was a case of hubris because now he could no longer exercise control over his own system, so it became worthless. For Friese-Greene, the arrival of the war and personal poverty meant there was nothing more to be done with colour for some years.

His son [[Claude Friese-Greene]] continued to develop the system with his father, after whose death in the early 1920s he called it "The Friese-Greene Natural Colour Process" and shot with it the documentary films "[[The Open Road (1926 film series)|The Open Road]]", which offer a rare portrait of 1920s Britain in colour.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web |url=https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-the-open-road-2006-online |title=Watch The Open Road – BFI Player |website=BFI Player |language=en |access-date=2018-02-15}}</ref><ref name=":1"/> These were featured in a BBC series ''[[The Lost World of Friese-Greene]]'' and then issued in a digitally restored form by the BFI on DVD in 2006.<ref name=":3"/>