Editing History of film (section)

==== Germany: Oskar Messter ====
[[File:Bundesarchiv N 1275 Bild-361-01, Oskar Messter.jpg|thumb|right|Oskar Messter]]
German inventor and film tycoon [[Oskar Messter]] was an important figure in the early years of cinema. His firm [[Messter Film]] was one of the dominant German producers before the rise of UFA, with which it merged eventually. Messter first added a [[Geneva drive]] on the projectors to oscillatingly cause intermittent movement to advance the frames of the film and he set up the first film studio in Germany in 1900.

From 1896, Messter was interested in the search of a method of reproduction and synchronization of the sound effects of the cinematographic performance at the time of the [[silent movies]]. So Messter invented the Tonbilder Biophon to show films, in which a gramophone played [[Unter den Linden]] accompanying the projection of animated images, but it was not a simple add on but to precisely match the series of musical pieces with moving images. In effect, to add sound to the silent cinema, it was necessary to solve problems of synchronization, since the image and the sound were recorded and reproduced by separated devices, which were difficult to initiate and to maintain rigged. On August 31, 1903, Messter held the first sound projection that took place in Germany at the "Apollo" Theater in Berlin.