The “film” is still preserved digitally, but contemporary viewers will undoubtedly find it a rather ho-hum production – total run time under a minute, with nothing much happening. A set of wooden gates open, and people and out come a bunch of men and women, two dogs, two bicyclists, and a horse and buggy. But at the first demonstration of the Lumiere brothers’ cinematograph device, it was a blockbuster.

On this day, March 19, in 1895, five weeks after patenting their device Auguste and Louis Lumiere gave a private screening of the first film ever known to be recorded. They called it La Sortie des Usines Lumière (Workers Leaving the Factory), and the footage was of their own factory workers.

The technology of cinema has progressed somewhat since that time. One hundred and three years to the day after the Lumiere private screening, JVC, the Japanese electronics consortium (who, incidentally, had the first VCRs) announced in their press release the first digital presentation of a cinema, in London. Several clips from popular films were stitched together – it was the delivery method, not the content that mattered –  and sent via fiber optic cable for display to viewers all over the world.