With machines mediating most of our cultural practices, and innovations, obsolescence and revivals constantly transforming our relation with images and sounds, media feel more unstable than ever. But was there ever a ‘stable’ moment in media history? *Inventing Cinema* proposes to approach this question through an archaeology and epistemology of media machines. The archaeology analyses them as archives of users’ gestures, as well as of modes of perception. The epistemology reconstructs the problems that the machines’ designers and users have strived to solve, and the network of concepts they have elaborated to understand these problems. Drawing on the philosophy of technology and anthropology, *Inventing Cinema* argues that networks of gestures, problems, perception and concepts are inscribed in vision machines, from the camera obscura to the stereoscope, the Cinématographe, and digital cinema. The invention of cinema is ultimately seen as an ongoing process irreducible to a single moment in history.

[Benoît Turquety](https://www.unil.ch/cin/fr/home/menuinst/collaborateurstrices/ancienn/turquety-benoit.html) is a professor in the film department at the University of Lausanne and director of the SNF research project on Bolex and amateur cinema. He is a founding member of the Material Archival Studies Network, and a member of the Dispositives research group, of the Network for Experimental Media Archaeology, and the Technology and the Humanities project.

AcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe Problems of Digital CinemaPart OneThe Why and How of MachinesA FEW DEFINITIONSTechnique/TechnologyMachines/DispositifsMACHINES, IMAGES, MOVEMENTThe Machines of Filippo BrunelleschiMachines and Movement, Machines and ImagesThe Machine and the Non-verbalTHE PERFORMANCE AND THE DEVICE: MACHINES-ARCHIVESMACHINES/SYSTEMSAN EXAMPLE: THE PRINCIPLE AND MACHINES - THE CAMERA OBSCURAPart TwoInvention, Innovation, HistoryINNOVATION IN CINEMA AND THE FILM SPECTATORINNOVATIVE TECHNIQUESINVENTION AND THE SHAPE OF HISTORYINNOVATIONS AND INVENTIONS IN CINEMAViewfinders and Those Viewed (The Camera Operator's Body 1: The Eye)EditingFOR AN EPISTEMOLOGY OF MACHINESAn Example: An Invention and its Epistemological Conditions, Wheatstone's StereoscopePart ThreeThe Invention of the ProblemTHE IDEA AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS: ANDRÉ BAZIN AS HISTORIOGRAPHERTHE IDEA AND THE QUESTION OF ORIGINS: AFTER PHOTOGRAPHYTHE INVENTION AND EVOLUTION OF PROBLEMS: SIMONDON WITH BACHELARDA LOUIS DUCOS DU HAURON PATENT (1864)CHARLES CROS AND 'SCENES IN MOTION' (1867)THE 'CINEMA' PROBLEMPart FourThe Invention of the CinématographeTHE CINÉMATOGRAPHE AND THE QUESTION OF INVENTIONTHE SITE OF THE INVENTIONTHE EDISON SYSTEM AND THE QUESTION OF CELLULOIDREVERSIBILITY, INSTANTANEOUSNESS AND PHOTOGRAM: THE QUESTION OF THE ADJUSTABLE SHUTTERA CONCRETE MACHINEOTHER ASPECTS OF THE CINÉMATOGRAPHEThe Crank (The Operator's Body Part Two: The Hand)The LensPart Five'Natural Colour Kinematography', a New Cinema Invention: Kinemacolor, Technical Network and Commercial PoliciesA TECHNOLOGY OF KINEMACOLORTHE CINEMA ACCORDING TO CHARLES URBANTECHNICS AND THE COMMERCIALCompatibility and SpecialisationConstraints or CoherencePart Six and EpilogueFrom the Trembling of Film to the Stability of the DigitalTOWARDS A TECHNOLOGY AND ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE DIGITALBIBLIOGRAPHYINDEX