William Friese-Greene - Career, After death

Photographer and inventor, born in Bristol, SW England, UK. In the 1880s he designed a camera to expose a sequence of photographs for projection by lantern slides as a moving image, and is thus claimed by some as the English inventor of cinematography; but he did not in fact propose perforated strips of film for either photography or projection. His first successful picture, using celluloid film, was shown in public in 1890.

William Friese-Greene (September 7, 1855–May 5, 1921) (born William Edward Green) was a portrait photographer and prolific inventor.

Career

William Edward Green was born on 7 September 1855, in Bristol.

In Bath he came into contact with John Arthur Roebuck Rudge. Friese-Greene was fascinated by the machine and in 1886 he began work with Rudge on enhancing it in order to project photographic plates. Friese-Greene realised that glass plates would never be a practical medium for true moving pictures and in 1885 he began to experiment with oiled paper and by 1887 was experimenting with celluloid as a medium for motion picture cameras.

On 21 June 1889, Friese-Greene was issued patent no. On 18 March, Friese-Greene sent a clipping of the story to Thomas Edison, whose laboratory had been developing a motion picture system known as the Kinetoscope. Friese-Greene gave a public demonstration in 1890 but the low frame rate combined with the device's apparent unreliability failed to make an impression.

Friese-Greene's later exploits were in the field of colour in motion pictures. This process produced the illusion of true colour by exposing each alternate frame of ordinary black and white film stock through a two different coloured filters. Although the projection of Biocolour prints did provide a tolerable illusion of true colour, it suffered from noticeable flickering and red and green fringing when the subject was in rapid motion. Friese-Greene found it impossible to exhibit Biocolour motion pictures because a rival system -- developed by George Albert Smith and Charles Urban and known as Kinemacolor -- claimed that any colour film was an infringement of their prior patent. With the financial assistance of the renowned British racing driver Selwyn Francis Edge, Friese-Greene attempted to invalidate Urban's patent in court. Friese-Greene claimed that the patent did not contain enough detail to encompass the Biocolour process. Friese-Greene's system was still in its infancy and he was unable to exploit this success. His son Claude Friese-Greene continued to develop the system during 1920s.

In 1921 Friese-Greene was attending a film and cinema industry meeting in London. Disturbed by the tone of the proceedings Friese-Greene got to his feet to speak but soon became incoherent.

After death

Friese-Greene's former home in Brighton's Middle Street, now a hostel for backpackers, bears a plaque (designed by Eric Gill in 1924) commemorating his achievements. A modern office building a few metres away is named Friese-Greene House. Other notices include the 1930s Kings Road, Chelsea, London, Odeon Cinema, with its iconic facade, which carries high upon it a large sculptored head-and-shoulders medalion of "William Friese-Greene" and his year of birth and death.

In 1951 a romanticised account of his life, starring Robert Donat and Laurence Olivier, was filmed as part of the Festival of Britain. A pub in a former cinema in Stokes Croft, Bristol is named The Magic Box in reference to Friese-Greene.

In 2006 the BBC ran a series of programmes called The Lost World of Friese-Greene, presented by Dan Cruickshank about Claude Friese-Greene's 1920s road trip from Land's End to John o' Groats, which he filmed using the Biocolour process. The original print of Claude's film was subjected to computer enhancement by the British Film Institute to remove the flickering problem.