{"id":2336,"date":"2024-04-21T11:52:20","date_gmt":"2024-04-21T15:52:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/?p=2336"},"modified":"2025-05-21T12:06:43","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T16:06:43","slug":"lumiere-brothers-from-burlington-to-honfleur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/lumiere-brothers-from-burlington-to-honfleur\/","title":{"rendered":"Lumiere Brothers, from Burlington to Honfleur"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Lumi\u00e8re Brothers
from Burlington to Honfleur<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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The Lumi\u00e8re brothers, Antoine and Louis, achieved immortality as cinema pioneers for inventing the Cin\u00e9matograph, the first device to record a sequence of images, then project them in succession onto a screen, creating the illusion of movement. In 1895 they used their invention to create the very first motion picture ever, \u201cWorkers Leaving the Lumi\u00e8re Factory.\u201d Our very word cinema<\/em> derives from the Lumi\u00e8res\u2019 invention.<\/p>

But the Lumi\u00e8res were also significant pioneers in still photography. They innovated a film process that used a dry glass plate, and by 1894 their Lyon factory was producing 15 million plates a year. A few years later they developed a color process that coated one side of the dry plate with microscopic colored starch grains. They patented Lumi\u00e8re Autochrome in 1904 and 1906.<\/p>

Cinema history long had it that the Lumi\u00e8res produced their plates only in France, but thanks to an ingenious historical detective (of whom more below), we now know that the brothers decided to build a factory in the United States, to get around a high tariff on French imports. Yet for the factory, they needed a site where their potential workforce spoke French, so they could communicate easily with them. Where could that be?<\/p>

They chose Burlington, Vermont, which had a large Francophone population comprising recent qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois immigrants as well as \u00a0descendants of long-ago French settlers. Another consideration: Burlington had a thriving dye industry, and dyes were needed for the Autochrome process.<\/p>

In 1901\u20133 the Lumi\u00e8res built a factory in Burlington that produced for markets in North America, Britain, and Ireland. Its clean rooms were refrigerated, lightproof, and dust free. Some of the first color photographs in North America were shot there.<\/p>

Then in 1912 the price of a certain crucial ingredient skyrocketed, changing the Lumi\u00e8res\u2019 financial considerations to the point that they shut down their Burlington operation. Thereafter it was all but lost to historical memory. Not even film historians knew about it. It was as if the plant had never existed at all.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The old Lumi\u00e8re building. Photo by Paul GIttelsohn.<\/figcaption>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/figure>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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The Research of Hugo Mart\u00ednez Caz\u00f3n<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Decades later Hugo Mart\u00ednez Caz\u00f3n, a Burlington environmental engineer with a passion for history and a sharp eye for documents, happened to notice that old advertisements for Lumi\u00e8re Autochrome mentioned production facilities in Burlington as well as Lyon. For years he puzzled over it, pored over old periodicals.<\/p>

Gradually it dawned on him that the Lumi\u00e8res had really had a factory in Burlington. He even found a testimonial by the famed New York photographer and gallerist Alfred Stieglitz on the Burlington Autochromes\u2019 high quality.\u00a0<\/p>

Mart\u00ednez Caz\u00f3n also came across a simple outline map, showing the plant\u2019s footprint but giving no indication of its location in town. \u00a0Through ingenious historical detective work, he deduced that it\u2019s the building at 180 Flynn Avenue that today houses the Burlington Beer Company. Yes, the building is still standing.<\/p>

In the spring of 2022 Mart\u00ednez Caz\u00f3n went public, sharing the results of his historical detective story with the world. He published an article<\/a> in the Vermont History journal, and his work was covered in the local press<\/a>.<\/p>

We’re pleased that Hugo Mart\u00ednez Caz\u00f3n is a member of the Burlington-Honfleur Sister Cities Commiteee. We’ll continue to update the story of his research as it unfolds.\u00a0<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The Norman Connection<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Later in 2022, Jumelage Comit\u00e9 member Philippe Grenier pointed out<\/a> that Normandy also plays a role in the life of the Lumi\u00e8re brothers. From 1928 to 1936, the Lumi\u00e8re brothers lived in Houlgate, a town near Honfleur in Normandy. There they set up a laboratory that they used for medical research. Based on their work there, they filed nearly 600 patents in medical equipment.<\/p>

The inventiveness of the two brothers transcended international borders!<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lumi\u00e8re Brothers from Burlington to Honfleur The Lumi\u00e8re brothers, Antoine and Louis, achieved immortality as cinema pioneers for inventing the Cin\u00e9matograph, the first device to record a sequence of images, then project them in succession onto a screen, creating the illusion of movement. In 1895 they used their invention to create the very first motion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/SC-Lumiere-tile.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2336"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2341,"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions\/2341"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/honfleurburlington.org\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}