Inventing Cinema: Machines, Gestures and Media History

(1) Provides a unique history of the invention of cinema at a time of technological instability that relies on understanding the archives of users' gestures and the epistemological dimension of machines more generally. It argues against an essentialist, determinist view of invention. (2) This is a rigorous, theoretical study presented in a readable manner that nevertheless broaches a timely subject of interest to other fields, notably the history of media. (3) The case studies are geographically and historically diverse, drawing into a single field of discussion an array of studies that should be of broad interest.