Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers began making films about scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of cinema as an educational medium. Excavating this largely unknown genre of early cinema, Devices of Curiosity traces its development from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around 1910. Oliver Gaycken investigates how such films both relied upon previous traditions and created novel visual paradigms that led to the creation of ambitious new film collections. Gaycken also discerns a transit between nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films, particularly Louis Feuillade's crime melodramas. Drawing on the insights of the history of science as well as the history of cinema, Devices of Curiosity reveals the extent to which popular-science films impacted the formation of documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas. Book jacket.