page_title: Paris in the Belle Époque
section_title: Cars, airplanes and movies
hierarchical_section_title: Paris in the Belle Époque / Cars, airplanes and movies
context_page_description: Paris in the Belle Époque was a period in the history of the city between the years 1871 to 1914, from the beginning of the Third French Republic until the First World War. It saw the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the Paris Métro, the completion of the Paris Opera, and the beginning of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre. Three lavish "universal expositions" in 1878, 1889 and 1900 brought millions of visitors to Paris to sample the latest innovations in commerce, art and technology. Paris was the scene of the first public projection of a motion picture, and the birthplace of the Ballets Russes, Impressionism and Modern Art.
  The expression Belle Époque came into use after the First World War; it was a nostalgic term for what seemed a simpler time of optimism, elegance and progress.
context_section_description: Three major new French industries were born in and around Paris at about the turn of the 20th century, taking advantage of the abundance of skilled engineers and technicians and financing from Paris banks. They produced the first French automobiles, aircraft, and motion pictures. In 1898, Louis Renault and his brother Marcel built their first automobile and founded a new company to produce them. They established their first factory at Boulogne-Billancourt, just outside the city, and made the first French truck in 1906. In 1908, they built 3,595 cars, making them the largest car manufacturer in France. They also received an important contract to make taxicabs for the largest Paris taxi company. When the first World War began in 1914, the Renault taxis of Paris were mobilized to carry French soldiers to the front at the First Battle of the Marne. 
  The French aviation pioneer Louis Blériot also established a company, Blériot Aéronautique, on the Boulevard Victor-Hugo in Neuilly, where he manufactured the first French airplanes. On 25 July 1909, he became the first man to fly across the English Channel. Blériot moved his company to Buc, near Versailles, where he established a private airport and a flying school. In 1910, he built the Aérobus, one of the first passenger aircraft, which could carry seven persons, the most of any aircraft of the time.
  The Lumière brothers had given the first projected showing of a motion picture, La Sortie de l'usine Lumière, at the Salon Indien du Grand Café of the Hôtel Scribe on the Boulevard des Capucines, on 28 December 1895. A young French entrepreneur, Georges Méliés, attended the first showing and asked the Lumière brothers for a license to make films. The Lumière Brothers politely declined, telling him that the cinema was for scientific purposes and had no commercial value. Méliés persisted and established his own small studio in 1897 in Montreuil, just east of Paris. He became a producer, director, scenarist, set designer and actor, and made hundreds of short films, including the first science-fiction film, A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune), in 1902. Another French cinema pioneer and producer Charles Pathé, also built a studio in Montreuil, then moved to the Rue des Vignerons in Vincennes, east of Paris. His chief rival in the early French film industry, Léon Gaumont, opened his first studio at about the same time at the Rue des Alouettes in the 19th arrondissement, near the Buttes-Chaumont.
caption: Louis Renault and his first car (1903)
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