Today in 1895, the Lumière brothers patented the cinematograph, from the Greek for "writing in movement."
The name cinematograph was conceived earlier by another French inventor, Léon Bouly, in his own patent application for a device for shooting and projecting film, granted on February 12, 1892. Bouly could not develop his ideas and maintain his patent fees, so the Lumière brothers were free to adopt the name and they applied it to a motion picture device that was mostly their own invention.
On December 28, 1895, the first public screening of films in which admission was charged was held by the Lumière brothers at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. It featured ten short films, including their first film, La Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (known in English as Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film was 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, ran approximately 50 seconds.
By 1900, the Lumière brothers had produced 1,299 short movies. For the World Fair that year, they developed their new Lumière wide format which, at 75mm wide, has held the record for over 100 years as the widest film format.