Santos Dumont Explaining His Air Ship to the Hon. C.S. Rolls (found short film; 1901)

One of the frames from the short.

Status: Found

Date found: 2002

Found by: Carlos Adriano

Santos Dumont Explaining His Air Ship to the Hon. C.S. Rolls is a short film made by a sequence of frames, filmed probably between November 22 and 28, 1901, in London. The short film shows Brazilian inventor Santos Dumont explaining the operation of his airship balloon to Charles Rolls, who would later be the founder of Rolls-Royce. It was filmed in London and shown on 3 December 1901 at the Palace Theatre.

Was probably photographed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a British inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison. The duration, at a speed of thirty frames per second, was 43 seconds and 26 frames.

The short film is considered quite relevant to the history of cinematography, because offers an insight into the techniques used at the turn of the 20th century.

Discovery

Like many films from that time, the film was considered lost, but in 2002 the film was found inside a Mutoscope that was in a room at the Museu Paulista at the University of São Paulo, by the USP researcher Carlos Adriano.

The Mutoscope belongs to the Santos Dumont Collection, donated by the Dumont family in 1935. Inside the Mutoscope, there were 1,322 photographic cards, of which 658 contained images.

Gallery

The short film.

External Links

• Page of the film on Wikipedia.