Article:

Das Problem »Kino«. Geschichte schreiben mit Bachelard und Simondon

The first researches on the animation of photographic images between 1850 and 1870 have been the object of discussions in media historiography. How can it be that, some thirty years before the concrete realization of the cinema, problems have been formulated that seem so close to what cinema will later do? And how can we avoid, to give a pertinent account of these parallels, the construction of a teleological history? This article proposes a reconsideration of these questions based on the concept of problem as it has been constructed by Gaston Bachelard and Gilbert Simondon in the histories of science and technology. The example of Charles Cros's 1867 «Process for the recording and reproduction of colors, forms and movements» illustrates this approach of technological history through the epistemology of problems.