Siegmund Lubin (April 20, 1851 – September 11, 1923) was a German-American motion picture pioneer.

Biography

He was born as Siegmund Lubszynski in Breslau or Posen, Silesia, Germany (now Wrocław, Poland) on April 20, 1851, to a German Jewish family, in which his father was a successful opthamalogist. In 1876 he emigrated to the United States, where he also worked as an optometrist in Philadelphia.

He soon progressed to making his own camera and projector combination, which he sold. In 1896 he began distributing films for Thomas Edison. in 1897 he started making films and in 1902 formed the Lubin Manufacturing Company, incorporating it in 1909. By 1910 his company had built a film studio, "Lubinville", in Philadelphia. at 20th and Indiana Sts.

A fire at its studio in June 1914 destroyed the negatives for his unreleased new films. When World War I broke out in Europe in September of that year, Lubin Studios, and other American filmmakers, lost foreign sales. After making more than a thousand motion pictures, on September 1, 1917, the Lubin Film Company went out of business.

He went back to work as an optometrist.

He died on September 11, 1923 at his home in Ventnor, New Jersey. He was buried on September 14, 1923.