- Détails
- Création : 19 mai 2024
- Mis à jour : 22 mai 2025
- Publication : 19 mai 2024
- Affichages : 268
Owen A. EAMES
(Embden, 1852-Boston, 1940)
[à confirmer]
Jean-Claude SEGUIN
2
Les origines (1852-1894)
Originaire du Maine, Owen A. Eames y réside avec sa famille pendant plusieurs années : recensement 1860 et recensement 1870. Il semble avoir fréquenté l'Anson Academy :
Owen A. Eames, son of Phineas, also attended Anson Academy.
WALKER, 1929: 406.
Toutefois, au recensement suivant, Owen n'habite plus avec ses parents (recensement 1880). Il est déjà installé à Boston en 1882 où il exerce la profession de tapissier ("upholstrorer") selon l'annuaire de la ville, ce qui est également le cas en 1886 (annuaire). Au début des années 1890, il se fait connaître comme photographe au sein du Boston Camera Club :
CAUGHT FROM THE SUN.
Marvellous Work in Photography by the Members of the Boston Camera Club at Their Exhibition.
The Boston Camera Club opened its fourth annual exhibition of photographic work by its members yesterday at the club rooms, 50 Bromfield st. It will be continued until the 16th.
[...]
Mr. O. A. Eames has several specialties in the shape of albumen photographs in the harbor or at sea.
Most of them are sunrise or sunset views, and the cloud and shadow effects are startling as well as weirdly beautiful.
The Boston Globe, Boston, jeudi 7 janvier 1892, p. 10.
Owen A. Eames devient le trésorier du Camera Club :
CAMERA.-At the annual meeting of the club, Jan. 1, 1894, will be hung the sixth annual club exhibition, which will be open to the public for two weeks.
[...]
The committee chosen at the December meeting under By-law 14 to nominate officers for the ensuing year have reported as follows: President, Edward R. Andrews; vice-presidents, George M. Morgan, William Sumner Briggs, J. Prince Loud; secretary, Wilbur C. Brown; treasurer, Owen A. Eames; librarian, Charles Sprague; executive committee for three years, Francis H. Manning, Ernest O. Cockayne.
Boston Post, Boston, dimanche 31 décembre 1893, p. 16.
Il participe également à une grande exposition qui se tient alors :
CAMERA.-One of the largest and most successful exhibitions of work of members of the Camera Club opened with the present year and will continue until Jan. 13. The pictures show a very great improvement in the general character of the work over that of a year ago. Some are really very excellent and would do credit to professionals. The large variety of subjects makes the display all the more interesting, and diplomas as well as meritorious mention cards are very liberally displayed. There are about 150 pictures in the collection.
The exhibitors are: O. A. Eames, E.O. Cockayne...
Boston Post, Boston, dimanche 7 janvier 1894, p. 16.
Pendant plusieurs années, il travaille pour l'établissement de John H. Pray, marchand de tapis et de moquettes :
Owen has been in Boston with the firm of John H. Pray many years.
WALKER, 1929: 406.
Sidewalk nº 646 Washington St., Boston. Mass, octobre 1904.
Source: Historic New England
L'animatoscope (1895-1899)
Owen A. Eames va s'intéresser très tôt aux images animées puisque la demande de brevet de la "camera lantern" date du 25 mars 1895. Voici ce que l'on peut y lire :
My present invention is based upon the the ory that it is possible to so arrange a lens or lenses, with reference to the film and the object or screen, that while the film is being fed at an excedingly rapid rate the lens may be made to travel in the same direction at a rate of speed necessary to cause, say, the central point of the lens to lie always in a line connecting the central point of the field on the film with the established center of the field on the object or screen.
EAMES Owen A., brevet nº 546093. 25 mars 1895.
La revue française La Vie scientifique qui consacre un article à l'animatoscope apporte les précisions suivantes :
Cet appareil est muni de deux objectifs doués d'un mouvement vertical et qui se déplacent en avant d'une pellicule assez grande pour recevoir, côte à cote, deux rangées d'images.
[...]
Le même appareil sert, ainsi que nous l'avons dit, à prendre les clichés négatifs et à projeter les dispositives. Pour projeter les images on emploie l'appareil tel qu'il est représenté sur la première figure. Pour l'impression des négatifs, c'est-à-dire pour utiliser l'animatoscope comme appareil photographique pur et simple, on se contente de retirer la partie de l'appareil qui sert exclusivement à la projection et de la remplacer par un capuchon qui garantit la chambre contre toute infiltration lumineuse.
Le brevet est finalement accordé au mois de septembre :
LIST OF PATENTS
Issued to New England inventors for the present week, as reported from the office of James H. Churchill, solicitor of patents, room 851, 53 State st, Boston:
[...]
Owen A. Eames, Boston, camera lantern.
The Boston Globe, Boston, mercredi 11 septembre 1895, p. 9.
L'animatoscope
EAMES Owen A., brevet nº 546093. 25 mars 1895.
Quelques mois plus tard, à l'occasion d'une séance du Camera Club de Boston, une présentation assez détaillée est offerte par la presse locale. Un film est même annoncé : Two Children at Play
The greatest invention in the photographic line which has been made lately, aside from the Röntgen process, of course, is the chronophotographic process which has been perfected by O. A. Eames, and of which he here exhibits the results in a frame of 112 points. These were taken on two films travelling at the rate of 7 1/4 inches per second, and takin ten negatives each second, each exposure lasting only one-seventieth of a second. The series represents two children at play. A little girl comes into view with her doll, sits down on a chair on a veranda, and proceeds to put the doll to sleep; a boy appears inside a window, looks about him to see if anyone is coming, opens the window-sash, slyly climbs out, snatches the doll out of the hands of the astonished maid, and makes off with it, followed by the distressed little mother. By running the positives from a reel through a stereopticon lantern, the inventor can produce the action of the figures on a screen, somewhat in the same manner as the figures are made to move in the kinetoscope; but his process has several very marked advantages over the kinetoscope. it is said, among others being the fact that the pictures are much larger. A demonstration of the new process will soon be made before the members of the Camera Club.
Boston Evening Transcript, Boston, mercredi 8 avril 1896, p. 8.
Pourtant, dans les mois qui suivent, on ne retrouve plus dans la presse d'autres projections soit publiques, soit dans le cadre plus modeste du Camera Club. Preuve probable de cet échec, l'annonce suivante publiée par Owen A. Eames qui indique que le "complete apparatus, patents and all rights to make, sell and use this process will be sold at a reasonable price".
The Boston Daily Globe, Boston, jeudi 15 avril 1897, p. 4.
Par la suite, ce n'est que très occasionnellement qu'Owen A. Eames propose des projections animées toujours avec son animatoscope qu'il n'a pas pu vendre semble-t-il :
The entertainment last night at the Christian Union consisted of a concert programme in which Miss Grace Clement, Miss Edith Hatch, Mr. Harry Dudley, tenor; Mr. Lyle C. True, pianist; Miss Edith Waterman, accompanist, and Mr. Charles H. Olin, ventriloquist, took part. Mr. Olin kept the audience in good humor with his excellent work. Following the concert was an exhibition by the animatoscope under the direction of Mr. O. A. Eames, which took up about thirty minutes, showing a number of interesting and amusing pictures.
Boston Evening Transcript, Boston, jeudi 23 février 1899, p. 8.
L'animatoscope ne semble pas avoir été commercialisé et le seul opérateur dont parle la presse est Owen A. Eames.
Et après... (1900-1940)
Au-delà de 1900, on n'entend plus parler de l'animatoscope, alors qu'Owen A. Eames réside toujours à Boston (recensement 1900). Par la suite, il s'installe à Everett, non loin de Boston où il tient un magasin de tapis.
The Boston Globe, Boston, mercredi 23 septembre 1909, p. 3.
Il y est recensé en 1910. Tout en poursuivant ses activités professionnelles à Everett (recensement 1930), Owen A. Eames semble avoir maintenu son intérêt pour la photographie puisqu'il aurait disposé d'un studio au 859 Boylston Street en 1932.
Owen A. Eames (c. 1920)
[à confirmer]
source: Jon Eames
Il est encore recensé en 1940 à Everett, peu avant sa disparition :
Obitury
OWEN A. EAMES DIES AT BOSTON
Owen Abel Eames, 88, inventor of one of the first moving picture machines in the United States and the first person to show moving pictures at Boston, died at his home in that city yesterday morning. Mr Eames was the father of Rev Dr Owen Whitman Eames, minister of the Church of the Unity in this city. Certain exclusive features on which Mr Eames had secured a patent were included in the motion picture machine he built and still are used today in modern movie machines. Mr. Eames sold his rights to this invention many years ago.
Mr Eames was born in main, May 8, 1852, but had lived in Boston for many years. he leaves his widow, Mrs Jane Allen Eames of Boston; two sons, Dr Eames of this city and Longmeadow, and Alfred L. Eames of Boston; one brother, Frank Eames of Los Angeles, Cal., and three grand-children. The funeral will be held privately tomorrow at Mount Auburn cemetery. Dr Eames officiating in accordance with a request of his father.
The Republican, Springfied, jeudi 9 mai 1940, p. 18.
Sources
Jon Eames. Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=9025321344230836&set=gm.800980818837450&idorvanity=513744017561133
EAMES Owen A., brevet nº 546093. 25 mars 1895.
EASMES Owen, "The Animatoscope", The Photographic Times, v. 28, 1896, p. 330-331.
REYNER Albert, "La Photographie animée. L'Animatoscope", La Vie Scientifique, 12 septembre 1896, p. 205-206. (Collection: Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon).
WALKER Ernest, George, Embden town or yore: olden times and families there and in adjacent towns, Skowhegan: Indepedent-Reporter Company, 1929, p. 405-408.
