the initial screenings in Europe, films by the Lumiere Brothers were shown in Egypt, first in the Tousson stock exchange in Alexandria on 5 November 1896 and then in the Hamam Schneider (Schneider Bath) in Cairo. Their actuality films, or actualités, are often cited as the first, primitive documentaries, but they had been preceded in this by the work of Birt Acres and Robert Paul in Britain. They made the first steps towards slapstick films with L'Arroseur Arrosé, and the early versions of Le Saut à la couverture and La Voltige. Early colour photography The brothers stated that "the cinema is an invention without any future" and declined to sell their camera to other filmmakers such as Georges Méliès. This made many film makers upset. Consequently, their role in the history of film was exceedingly brief. In parallel with their cinema work they experimented with colour photography. They worked on colour photographic processes in the 1890s including the Lippmann process (interference heliochromy) and their own 'bichromated glue' process, a subtractive colour process, examples of which were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900. This last process was commercialised by the Lumieres but commercial success had to wait for their next colour process. In 1903 they patented a colour photographic process, the Autochrome Lumière, which was launched on the market in 1907. Throughout much of the 20th century, the Lumière company was a major producer of photographic products in Europe, but the brand name, Lumière, disappeared from the marketplace following merger with Ilford. Film systems that preceded the Cinématographe Lumière Earlier moving images in for instance phantasmagoria shows, the phénakisticope, the zoetrope and Émile Reynaud's Théâtre Optique consisted of hand-drawn images. A system that could record reality in motion, in a fashion much like it is seen by the eyes, had a greater impact on people. Eadweard Muybridge's Zoopraxiscope projected moving painted silhouettes based on his chronophotography photography. The only Zoopraxiscope disc with actual photographs was made with an early form of stop motion. Less-known predecessors, such as Jules Duboscq's Bioscope were not projected. Louis Le Prince's Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) is now widely regarded as the first example of filmed moving pictures, but Le Prince disappeared without a trace in 1890 before he managed to present his work or publish about it. William Friese-Greene patented a "machine camera" in 1889, which embodied many aspects of later film cameras.