听写

Moving images have always been popular. In China, for example, there were “shadow plays” 5,000 years ago. These used firelight to project images of puppets onto screens. So projection is a very old idea. But cinema only became possible when this old (1) idea met a new European one - photography.

The two came together in the (2) of the 19th century. That’s when photos were first used in “magic lanterns”. Before then, these early projectors had used glass slides. The pictures on these slides were (3) and very expensive. In comparison, photos were cheap and easy to produce.

So by 1850, projection and photography had come together. But the (4) still wasn’t “cinema”. How could it be when the pictures didn’t move? The solution to that problem came in several (5).

The first, in 1877, came via English inventor Eadweard Muybridge. He discovered a way to take photos very quickly, one after another. Eleven years later, an American called George Eastman produced the first celluloid (6) on a roll. By 1890, it was possible to take up to 40 photos per (7). Next, in 1893, came another invention - Thomas Edison’s “kinetoscope”.

The kinetoscope projected moving pictures, but it had three problems. It was (8). The pictures it produced were very low-quality. Only one person could watch a kinetoscope at a time.

Before cinema could be born, one last invention was necessary - a quiet machine able to project high-(9) pictures onto a large screen. And the men who produced that were two (10) brothers from the City of Lyons.