William Friese-Greene(1855-1921)

William Friese-Greene was a prolific English inventor and professional photographer born in Bristol, England. He studied at the Queen Elizabeth's Hospital school. In 1871, he was apprenticed to the Bristol photographer Marcus Guttenberg, but later successfully went to court to be freed early from the indentures of his seven-year apprenticeship. He married the Swiss, Helena Friese, on 24 March 1874 and, in a remarkable move for the era, decided to add her maiden name to his surname. In 1876, he set up his own studio in Bath and, by 1881, had expanded his business, having more studios in Bath, Bristol and Plymouth. In Bath he came into contact with John Arthur Roebuck Rudge, a scientific instrument maker, who built what he called the Biophantic Lantern, which could display seven photographic slides in rapid succession, producing the illusion of movement. 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. 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 before turning his attention to experimenting with celluloid as a medium for motion picture cameras. In 1888, he had some form of moving picture camera constructed, the nature of which is not known. On 21 June 1889, he was issued patent no. 10131 for a motion-picture camera, in collaboration with a civil engineer, Mortimer Evans. It was apparently capable of taking up to ten photographs per second using paper and celluloid film. In 1890 he developed a camera with Frederick Varley to shoot stereoscopic moving images. This ran at a slower frame rate, and although the 3D arrangement worked, there are no records of projection. He worked on a series of moving picture cameras into 1891, but although many individuals recount seeing his projected images privately, he never gave a successful public projection of moving pictures. His experiments with motion pictures were to the detriment of his other business interests and in 1891 he was declared bankrupt. From 1904 he lived in Brighton and, in 1905, he patented a two-colour moving picture system using prisms. Eventually, the arrival of the war and personal poverty meant there was nothing more to be done with colour for some years. On 5 May 1921, Friese-Greene, then a largely forgotten figure, attended a stormy meeting of the cinema trade at the Connaught Rooms in London to discuss the current poor state of British film distribution. Disturbed by the tone of the proceedings, Friese-Greene got to his feet to speak. The chairman asked him to come forward onto the platform to be heard better, which he did, appealing for the two sides to come together. Shortly after returning to his seat, he collapsed. People went to his aid and took him outside, but he died almost immediately of heart failure.