Léon Gaumont was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 inventor, engineer, and industrialist who was a pioneer of the motion picture industry.

Léon Ernest Gaumont, born in Semblancay

Semblançay

Semblançay is a commune in the Indre-et-Loire department in central France.-See also:*Communes of the Indre-et-Loire department*Samblanay...

, Indre-et-Loire

Indre-et-Loire

Indre-et-Loire is a department in west-central France named after the Indre and the Loire rivers.-History:Indre-et-Loire is one of the original 83 départements created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...

 was gifted with a mechanical mind which led him to employment manufacturing precision instruments. From early childhood, he was fascinated by the technique of photography. When he was offered a job at the Comptoir géneral de photographie in 1893, he jumped at the opportunity. His decision proved fortunate when two years later he was given the chance to acquire the business. In August 1895, he partnered with the astronomer :fr:Joseph Vallot, the famous engineer Gustave Eiffel

Gustave Eiffel

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was a French structural engineer from the École Centrale Paris, an architect, an entrepreneur and a specialist of metallic structures...

, and the financier Alfred Besnier to make the purchase. Their business entity, called L. Gaumont et Cie

Gaumont Film Company

Gaumont Film Company is a French film production company founded in 1895 by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont . Gaumont is the oldest continously operating film company in the world....

, has survived in one form or another to become the world's oldest surviving film company extant. The company logo was the distinctive "Marguerite" (named after his mother), a type of flower similar to the daisy. The company had extensive studios (La Cite L'Elge) in the Buttes Chaumont District of Paris, and a smaller operation in Nice, France.

Léon Gaumont's company sold camera equipment and film, but in 1897 inaugurated a motion picture production business. Initially, Gaumont made films for the picture arcade business such as those operated by the Lumière brothers

Auguste and Louis Lumière

The Lumière brothers, Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas and Louis Jean , were among the earliest filmmakers in history...

, but it was under the direction of Alice Guy (Gaumont's secretary - First Woman Film Director), that they began making short films based on narrative scripts. Louis Feuillade

Louis Feuillade

Louis Feuillade was a prolific and prominent French film director from the silent era. Between 1906 and 1924 he directed over 630 films...

 (Judex, Les Vampires

Les Vampires

Les Vampires is a 1915/1916 ten-part silent film serial. It was written and directed by Louis Feuillade and stars Musidora as "Irma Vep" a femme fatale whose name is a suspicious anagram of "vampire." The serial is set in Paris and follows the exploits of a gang of master criminals who call...

, Fantomas

Fantômas

Fantômas is a fictional character created by French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre .One of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction, Fantômas was created in 1911 and appeared in a total of 32 volumes written by the two collaborators, then a subsequent 11...

) was to follow as the Studio Director when Guy left for Fort, Lee, New Jersey, where she subsequently opened her own production company—Solax Films) and it was then that Gaumont rapidly expanded the business into cinematographic equipment for amateurs. Within a few years, Gaumont's company ranked second only to Pathé Frères in the field of French Cinema. In 1903, Gaumont was granted patents for his Chronophonographe and loudspeaker system designed to work with his sound-on-disc talking pictures. The Etablissements Gaumont was founded in 1906 to handle film production and distribution plus to build a chain of movie theaters including the giant Gaumont Palace (Place Clichy - former "Hippodrome) in Paris (largest in the world at the time). By 1910 Léon Gaumont had improved his synchronous sound invention to the point where he was able to provide enough volume for up to 4000 people in a theater. In 1912, Gaumont developed a color process for film.

One of the two dominant forces in film in all of Europe, World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 profoundly affected Leon Gaumont's business fortunes (over 300 employees were drafted, Nitrate Emulsion film stocks dwindled because of the need for nitro-cellulous in the munitions industry); nevertheless, before retiring in 1930, he had built one of the most important film companies in cinema history.

Upon his retirement to Provence, a restructuring of corporate ownership took place through financing provided by the Banque Nationale de Crédit and with a capital stock issue in the name of a new company called Gaumont-Franco-Film-Aubert (GFFA). Four years later, a scandal erupted following the collapse of the Banque Nationale de Crédit and GFFA was forced to file for bankruptcy protection.

Léon Gaumont died in 1946 in Sainte-Maxime

Sainte-Maxime

Sainte-Maxime is a commune and city in the Var department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. I.e. on the French Riviera in southeastern France from Nice and from Marseille.-Village:...

, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur

Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur or PACA is one of the 27 regions of France.It is made up of:* the former French province of Provence* the former papal territory of Avignon, known as Comtat Venaissin...

 region of France, and was buried in the :fr:Cimetière de Belleville - metro Telegraphe in Paris. In 1995, on the 100th anniversary of French film, a commemorative 100 Franc coin was issued with Léon Gaumont's image.