Auguste Baron was the inventor of several early moving image devices, including a “Machine system for perforating photographic film and other materials in ribbon form” (Patent no. 256926, 1896); and a “Device for animated circular projections known as cinematorama” (Patent no. 261650, 1893). He earned a place in the history of cinema through his experiments with motion picture sound synchronisation, which began in 1896 and resulted in his Graphophonoscope (“Advanced apparatus for simultaneously recording and reproducing animated scenes and the sounds that accompany them” [Patent no. 276628, filed on 4 April 1898]). The main feature of the Graphophonoscope was a synchronism mechanism that linked the reversible camera/projector and the recording and reproducing phonograph.

In 1899, reverting to earlier pre-cinema devices – Jan Évangéliste Purkyne’s Kinesiskope (1850); and Georges Demenÿ’s Phonoscope (1892) – Baron presented a “living portrait” (Portrait vivant) consisting of a series of 20 photographic images 12mm (0.472 in) wide and 17mm (0.669 in) high, glued to a transparent celluloid disc. The images reproduced the movements of a woman turning her head. The disc, kept at the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, is 12.5cm (4.92 in) in diameter. In 1902, the celluloid disc was increased to 17cm (6.69 in) in diameter: photosensitive paper and contained 31 radial rows of 4 and 5 images, arranged in a spiral pattern (a total of 130 images: 25 rows of 4 images; 6 rows of 5 images). He called this device the Escargot cinématographique (“Cinematographic snail”) because of the spiral arrangement of images – reminiscent of the spiral structure of a snail’s shell. Only two other Escargot discs – one positive and the other negative – reproducing the same street scene, are known to exist. No public presentations of the format have been documented (Basile & Mannoni, 1998).