Birt Acres

American-born English inventor and technician, a pioneer of early cinema design, photography, development, and patents. He was born to English parents in Richmond, Virginia, on July 23, 1854. His parents moved with young Birt to North Carolina and started a plantation there. However, the U.S. Civil War erupted and both parents died defending the plantation. Young Acres, orphaned at 10, went to live with his aunt in Virginia. She recognized his artistic and inventive talents and sent him to Paris to study at the Sorbonne Art Studios. He became enthralled with photography and began to study the science of cameras and the potential for moving pictures. Upon his return from France, he set out on a long journey through the American West. He worked as a lumberjack and studied and traded with Native American tribes. Eventually, his love of photography led him to move to England, where he opened a photography and painting studio in Ilfracombe, Devon. He applied himself to the study and development of photographic chemistry. He wrote scholarly articles on photography and chemical development and became rather well-known in the photographic community. He was invited to join the Royal Meteorological and Photographic Societies. In 1891, he was invited to take over the running of Elliott & Sons, the leading British maker of photographic plates and paper. He moved to London with his relatively new family. He was especially fond of nature photography and developed a slide projector which could crudely replicate, by shuffling rapidly through images, the motion of waves, clouds, and wind-blown trees, a precursor using the persistence of vision effect that would make motion pictures possible. In 1894, Acres met Robert W. Paul, who was interested in creating films that could be shown on Thomas A. Edison's new kinetoscope. Together they invented a camera that would make 35 mm films compatible with Edison's machine. Acres used it to create the first film to be shot in England, Clovelly Cottage, Barnet (1895) or "lncident in Clovelly Cottage," filmed at Acres's home. Acres and Paul began making films of various sporting events as well as human interest and comedy pieces. But the two men were incompatible partners and split up angrily in 1895. Each went his own way, and they became competitors in the business of projector manufacture and sales. Acres in January, 1896, presented the first public projection of motion picture film in Britain with screenings at the Lyonsdown Photographic Club and the Royal Photographic Society. He presented his films at a Royal Command Performance at Marlborough House that summer and was invited to photograph the Prince and Princess of Wales at the Cardiff Exhibition. With a prescient concept of a home-movie market, he invented a 17.5 mm camera called the Birtac that used half the normal amount of film and was small enough to be used by non-professional individuals. His original projector, the Kineopticon, or Kinetic Lantern, he continued to develop and improve. He founded a company, The Northern Photographic Works (later Whetstone Photographic Works), in London. He continued to invent and develop products for motion picture photography, but was reluctant to take part in the increasing entertainment market for films. Thus his business began to suffer, since he preferred to promote (and lecture about) scientific and nature-oriented cinema. He was twice bankrupted and by 1900 had abandoned the film business. He died from peritonitis following appendicitis on December 27, 1918, at 64, survived by his wife of 27 years, Annie, and their two children. He is buried in Walthamstow Cemetery in Greater London.