London's Trafalgar Square

1890 Documentary 2 seconds Directed by William Carr Crofts

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About London's Trafalgar Square

Wordsworth Donisthorpe and William Carr Crofts film traffic moving through Trafalgar Square. The camera stays fixed. Ten frames of the shot survive.

Cast & crew

More about London's Trafalgar Square

Donisthorpe and Crofts shot the view in 1890 with the kinesigraph camera they had built, on celluloid, at about 10 frames per second.

Themes

Look

Donisthorpe and Crofts exposed the kinesigraph at about 10 frames per second, with an oval or circular mask.

Preservation

Ten frames survive. They are the earliest known moving pictures of London.

Notes

  • The frame is oval or circular rather than a rectangle.
  • Wikipedia calls the surviving frames the earliest known motion picture of London.

Scenes

  • Street traffic passes through Trafalgar Square in the ten surviving frames.

Also available

  • Wikimedia Commons (Traf fr5br1200.ogv)