# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Greene, William Friese-

​GREENE, WILLIAM FRIESE- (1855–1921), pioneer of kinematography, one of the seven children of James Greene, ​wrought-iron worker, of Bristol, was born in that city at 69 College Street, 7 September 1855, and educated at Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, Clifton. He early made the acquaintance of William Henry Fox Talbot [q.v.] from whom he gained a good working knowledge of photography. He took up the craft for a living and for some years led a roving life as a travelling photographer. In 1882 he became acquainted with John Arthur Roebuck Rudge, of Bath, who had made a study of the photography of motion and had invented the ‘bio-phantascope’, an instrument which recorded movement by means of the rapid projection of lantern slides of motion-photographs. Friese-Greene helped Rudge to continue his experiments until 1884, when the latter was incapacitated by illness from further active work. Their efforts were directed to reproducing, by means of camera and projecting lantern, the synthesis of motion, and are thus distinct from the experiments of Eadweard Muybridge [q.v.], whose chief aim was the analysis of animal movement, for scientific purposes, by means of high-speed photography. Shortly after this, Friese-Greene went to London, opened a photographic business in Piccadilly, and lived at 39 King’s Road, Chelsea, where he fitted up a laboratory and began a further series of experiments in motion-photography. His business flourished, and he established branches of it not only in London but in Bath, Bristol, and Plymouth.
Friese-Greene’s experiments in the projection of motion-photographs began to attract attention about 1885. In that year, and again in 1887, he exhibited before the (Royal) Photographic Society machines for projecting such photographs taken upon revolving glass plates. In January 1888 he used, for the first time, a band of sensitized paper made trans- parent by being dipped in castor-oil; but attempts to produce satisfactory positives, for projection, from such negatives, were not successful. In the same year he was awarded at Vienna the Daguerre medal for the latest advance in photography. Having found sensitized paper impracticable, Friese-Greene turned his attention to celluloid (which had been invented in 1865), and, after many experiments directed to making this substance suitable as a flexible, transparent base for a photographic emulsion, he succeeded in the spring of 1889 in producing a sensitized celluloid ribbon-film satisfactory for his purpose. In June 1889 he lodged a provisional application for a patent, the complete specification of which was accepted in May 1890; with his name he coupled that of Mortimer Evans, an engineer who had helped him to devise the mechanism for operating the film in the camera and projector. The first film successfully taken and projected with the new apparatus was of a scene at Hyde Park Corner in October 1889; it was first publicly exhibited at Chester town hall in July 1890, and a portion of it is now in the South Kensington Museum.
Other experimenters, both English and foreign, were already in the field, and Friese-Greene’s patent was quickly followed by other specifications on similar lines. There has, indeed, been much dispute as to the respective shares in the evolution of the modern kinematograph of inventors such as E. F. Marey, G. Demeny, and L. Lumière in France, C. F. Jenkins and T. A. Edison in America, and M. Skladanowsky in Germany, all of whom were at work on the problem from this time; but by a judgment of the United States circuit court in November 1910, in the action of the Motion Picture Patents Co. v. Steiner, Friese-Greene’s patent was recognized as the master kinematographic patent of the world.
Friese-Greene had neglected his business for his laboratory (which he had moved from Chelsea to 20 Brooke Street, Holborn), and so far from being able to exploit his invention commercially, he found himself in 1891 involved in bankruptcy proceedings, the outcome of which was a short term in Brixton Prison—for contempt of court—and the loss of all his early apparatus in a sale of his effects. He was able to resume his experiments in 1892, and thereafter he laboured incessantly upon the improvement of kinematographic mechanism and, subsequently, upon the projection of motion-pictures in natural colours. He took out many more patents, and became a well-known figure in the film industry, but he remained in financial difficulties until the end of his days. He died suddenly at a trade conference in the Connaught Rooms, Great Queen Street, 5 May 1921. He was buried in Highgate cemetery, and over his grave a headstone recording his invention was erected by public subscription. Friese- Greene was twice married: first, in 1874 to Victoria Marina Friese, who died without issue; secondly, in 1897 to Edith Jane Harrison, by whom he had five sons.
[The Optical and Magic Lantern Journal, November 1889, and Scientific American Supplement (New York), 19 April 1890, for contemporary accounts of Friese-Greene’s ​invention; Photographic Journal, October 1924 and July 1926; private information; personal knowledge.]
W. E. L. D.