Charles Pathé

Charles Morand Pathé 26 December 1863 25 December 1957 was a pioneer of the French film and recording industries As the founder of Pathé Frères its roots lie in 1896 Paris France when Pathé and his brothers pioneered the development of the moving image Pathé adopted the national emblem of France the cockerel as the trademark for his company After the company now called Compagnie Générale des Éstablissements Pathé Frères Phonographes Cinématographes invented the cinema newsreel with PathéJournal The son of a butcher shop owner Charles Morand Pathé was born at ChevryCossigny in the SeineetMarne département of France His father Jacques Pathé and mother ThérèseÉmélie Kech were butchers by trade and ran a delicatessen first in ChevryCossigny and later in Vincennes Charles had three brothers and two sisters Pathé left school at 14 to work as an apprentice butcher at rue de Charenton Paris After military service in 1889 at 25 he began working as a meat merchant but soon took his savings and with the help of his brothers and his sister embarked for Buenos Aires Argentina with the aim of setting up in business Pathé tried to establish himself in various trades including a laundry service based on industrial washing machines that turned out to be unsuccessful His life was unsettled and Pathé was forced to change jobs frequently After a final failure of trying to deal in exotic parrots when he and his business partner were stricken with yellow fever Pathé returned to France in poor health At age 30 Pathé married lle Foy in Paris and worked as a clerk drawing a meager salary Back in Vincennes in August 1894 Pathé saw the phonograph invented by Thomas Edison demonstrated at the town fair He immediately embraced the sound recording technology purchasing examples of Edison machines to resell In 1896 with his brothers Émile Théophile and Jacques Pathé founded Société Pathé Frères Pathé Brothers in Paris a company that manufactured and sold phonographs and phonograph cylinders with Émile Pathé at his head While in London Pathé saw the Edison Kinetoscope and decided to expand the Pathé companys business to distributing cinema projection equipment and with the acquisition of Eastman Kodak patent rights in Europe a licence for film stock in theatres throughout France Pathé films were rented out for a maximum of four months a more lucrative business than selling the product A modest first factory had been installed in 1896 at Vincennes The first films of the Société Pathé Frères such as Le Passage à niveau à Joinville le Pont and LArrivée dun train en gare de BelAir were produced under Pathés guidance For several years however the success of the phonograph business underwrote the success of the cinema company Source Article Charles Pathé from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30