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105-621: On December 18, 1896, the Lumiere cinematographe films were presented for two months in the Winter Garden, which had a 2000-seat capacity. It became the first venue in the United States to make motion pictures a standard part of programming until it closed. In the summer of 1897, film pioneer Edwin S. Porter , an electrician by training, assisted in the building of a custom film projector, to replace one destroyed by fire. In 1887 he returned with

210-481: A motor -powered camera, the Kinetograph, capable of shooting with the new sprocketed film. To govern the intermittent movement of the film in the camera, allowing the strip to stop long enough so each frame could be fully exposed and then advancing it quickly (in about 1/460 of a second) to the next frame, the sprocket wheel that engaged the strip was driven by an escapement disc mechanism—the first practical system for

315-420: A British vaudeville contortionist), Bertoldi (table contortion) , Blacksmiths , Roosters (some manner of cock fight), Highland Dance , Horse Shoeing , Sandow ( Eugen Sandow , a German strongman managed by Florenz Ziegfeld ), Trapeze , and Wrestling . As historian Charles Musser describes, a "profound transformation of American life and performance culture" had begun. Twenty-five cents for no more than

420-591: A Library of Congress educational website states, "The picture and sound were made somewhat synchronous by connecting the two with a belt", this is incorrect. As historian David Robinson describes, "The Kinetophone...made no attempt at synchronization. The viewer listened through tubes to a phonograph concealed in the cabinet and performing approximately appropriate music or other sound." Historian Douglas Gomery concurs, "[Edison] did not try to synchronize sound and image." Leading production sound mixer Mark Ulano writes that Kinetophones "did not play synchronously other than

525-573: A Masonic temple) were substantially lower, about $ 700 a month, though presumably operating costs were lower as well. For each machine, Edison's business at first generally charged $ 250 to the Kinetoscope Company and other distributors, which would use them in their own exhibition parlors or resell them to independent exhibitors; individual films were initially priced by Edison at $ 10. During the Kinetoscope's first eleven months of commercialization,

630-415: A cylinder (also referred to as a "drum"); the cylinder, made of an opaque material for positive images or of glass for negatives, was coated in collodion to provide a photographic base. An audio cylinder would provide synchronized sound, while the rotating images, hardly operatic in scale, were viewed through a microscope-like tube. When tests were made with images expanded to a mere 1/8 of an inch in width,

735-779: A few minutes of entertainment was hardly cheap diversion. For the same amount, one could purchase a ticket to a major vaudeville theater; when America's first amusement park opened in Coney Island the following year, a 25-cent entrance fee covered admission to three rides, a performing sea lion show, and a dance hall. The Kinetoscope was an immediate success, however, and by June 1, the Hollands were also operating venues in Chicago and San Francisco. Entrepreneurs (including Raff and Gammon, with their own International Novelty Co.) were soon running Kinetoscope parlors and temporary exhibition venues around

840-416: A few years by competing systems, in particular those based on the so-called Geneva drive or "Maltese cross" that would become the norm for both movie cameras and projectors. The exhibition device itself—which, despite erroneous accounts to the contrary, never employed intermittent film movement, only intermittent lighting or viewing—was finally awarded its patent, number 493,426, on March 14. The Kinetoscope

945-449: A film could run for almost 27 seconds. Hendricks identifies Sandow as having been shot at 16 fps, as does the Library of Congress in its online catalog, where its duration is listed as 40 seconds. Even at the slowest of these rates, the running time would not have been enough to accommodate a satisfactory exchange of fisticuffs; 16 fps, as well, might have been thought to give too herky-jerky

1050-548: A fishing line–type belt and a series of metal pulleys. It met with early acclaim, but poorly trained operators had trouble keeping picture in synchronization with sound and, like other sound-film systems of the era, the Kinetophone had not solved the issues of insufficient amplification and unpleasant audio quality. Its drawing power as a novelty soon faded and when a fire at Edison's West Orange complex in December 1914 destroyed all of

1155-446: A functional strip-based film viewing system. In the new design, whose mechanics were housed in a wooden cabinet, a loop of horizontally configured 3/4 inch (19 mm) film ran around a series of spindles. The film, with a single row of perforations engaged by an electrically powered sprocket wheel, was drawn continuously beneath a magnifying lens. An electric lamp shone up from beneath the film, casting its circular-format images onto

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1260-567: A job programming short films for exhibition, after the Eden Musee became Thomas Edison 's first motion picture licensee. On February 1, 1898 the Eden Musee released its first self-produced film, The Passion Play of Oberammergau . This was billed as film actually shot in Oberammergau, Germany, when it was actually shot on the roof of the original Grand Central Palace in New York City, a fact that

1365-513: A lecture amid a tour in which he demonstrated his zoopraxiscope , a device that projected sequential images drawn around the edge of a glass disc, producing the illusion of motion. Edison's laboratory was close by, and either or both Edison and his company's official photographer, William Dickson , may have attended. Two days later, Muybridge and Edison met at the Edison lab in West Orange and discussed

1470-415: A lot of them at a good profit. If we put out a screen machine there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines you could show the pictures to everybody in the country—and then it would be done. Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Under continuing pressure from Raff, Edison eventually conceded to investigate the possibility of developing

1575-508: A motion picture system uniting image with sound. The Kinetophone (also known as Phonokinetoscope) was an early attempt by Edison and Dickson to create a sound-film system. The October 1893 Scientific American report on the Chicago World's Fair suggests that a Kinetograph camera accompanied by a cylinder phonograph was presented there as a demonstration of the potential to simultaneously record image and sound. The first known movie made as

1680-624: A paying public in Berlin from 1 November 1895 until the end of the month. Their machinery was relatively cumbersome and their films much shorter than those of the Lumière brothers. The Skladnowskys' booked screenings in Paris were cancelled after the news of the Lumière show. Nonetheless, they toured their films to other countries. Kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at

1785-461: A performance by the Spanish dancer Carmencita , a New York music hall star since the beginning of the decade. According to one description of her live act, she "communicated an intense sexuality across the footlights that led male reporters to write long, exuberant columns about her performance"—articles that would later be reproduced in the Edison film catalog. The Kinetoscope movie of her dance, shot at

1890-421: A practical reality. The Edison laboratory, though, worked as a collaborative organization. Laboratory assistants were assigned to work on many projects while Edison supervised and involved himself and participated to varying degrees. Dickson and his then lead assistant, Charles Brown, made halting progress at first. Edison's original idea involved recording pinpoint photographs, 1/32 of an inch wide, directly on to

1995-505: A projection system. He seconded one of his lab's technicians to the Kinetoscope Company to initiate the work, without informing Dickson. Tensions between the latter and Edison Company general manager William Gilmore had been running high for months; Dickson's eventual discovery of the Kinetoscope Company move appears to have been another central factor in his break with Edison that occurred in April 1895. The Kinetophone's debut excited little demand;

2100-470: A public Kinetoscope parlor was opened by the Holland Bros. in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street—the first commercial motion picture house. The venue had ten machines, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill. The four-foot-tall machines were purchased from

2205-537: A recent two-month span. The Kinetoscope was also gaining notice abroad. On July 16, 1894, it was demonstrated publicly for the first time in Europe at the 20 boulevard Montmartre newsroom of Le petit Parisienne , where photographer Antoine Lumière may have seen it for the first time. In September, the first Kinetoscope parlor outside the United States opened in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The first European Kinetoscope parlor

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2310-515: A rectangular image, 1 inch wide by 3/4 inch high, and four perforations on each side. Within a few years, this basic format—with the gauge known by its metric equivalent, 35 mm —would be adopted globally as the standard for motion picture film, which it remains to this day. The publication in the October 1892 Phonogram of cinematographic sequences shot in the format demonstrates that the Kinetograph had already been reconfigured to produce movies with

2415-418: A speed as low as thirty pictures per second or even lower is sufficient." Indeed, according to the Library of Congress archive, based on data from a study by historian Charles Musser , Dickson Greeting and at least two other films made with the Kinetograph in 1891 were shot at 30 frames per second or even slower. The Kinetoscope application also included a plan for a stereoscopic film projection system that

2520-585: 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

2625-649: A test of the Kinetophone was shot at Edison's New Jersey studio in late 1894 or early 1895; now referred to as the Dickson Experimental Sound Film , it is the only surviving movie with live-recorded sound made for the Kinetophone. In March 1895, Edison offered the device for sale; involving no technological innovations, it was a Kinetoscope whose modified cabinet included an accompanying cylinder phonograph. Kinetoscope owners were also offered kits with which to retrofit their equipment. The first Kinetophone exhibitions appear to have taken place in April. Though

2730-425: A third running horizontally the entire length of the theater, beneath the floor. Two years later, he supervised a press demonstration at the laboratory of a sound-film system of either this or a later design. In 1913, Edison finally introduced the new Kinetophone—like all of his sound-film exhibition systems since the first in the mid-1890s, it used a cylinder phonograph, now connected to a Projecting Kinetoscope via

2835-446: A time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector , but it introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video : it created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1888, it

2940-536: A total of just forty-five of the machines were built over the next half-decade. With Dickson's departure, Edison ceased new work on sound cinema for an extended period. On January 3, 1895, a British inventor received a patent for an unwieldy contraption meant to cast an enlarged Kinetoscope image onto a screen. Over the course of the year, even as new Kinetoscope exhibits opened as far afield as Mexico City, major cities across Europe, locales large and small around Australia, and Auckland, New Zealand, it became evident that

3045-482: A trip of Edison's to Europe and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, for which he departed August 2 or 3, 1889. During his two months abroad, Edison visited with scientist-photographer Étienne-Jules Marey , who had devised a " chronophotographic gun "—the first portable motion picture camera —which used a strip of flexible film designed to capture sequential images at 12 frames per second. Upon his return to

3150-452: A very small rectangular opening in the rim [rotates] directly over the film. An incandescent lamp...is placed below the film...and the light passes up through the film, shutter opening, and magnifying lens...to the eye of the observer placed at the opening in the top of the case." Robinson, on the other hand, says the shutter—which he agrees has only a single slit—is positioned lower, "between the lamp and film". The Casler–Hendricks description

3255-458: A visual effect for enjoyment of the sport. The Kinetograph and Kinetoscope were modified, possibly with Rector's assistance, so they could manage filmstrips three times longer than had previously been used. On June 15, a match with abbreviated rounds was staged between boxers Michael Leonard and Jack Cushing at the Black Maria. Seven-hundred-and-fifty feet worth of images or even more were shot at

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3360-509: 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,

3465-469: Is confirmed by photographs of multiple Kinetoscope interiors, two among the holdings of The Henry Ford and one that appears in Hendricks's own book. On February 21, 1893, a patent was issued for the system that governed the intermittent movement of film in the Kinetograph (though one was not granted for a version of the camera as a whole until 1897). The escapement-based mechanism would be superseded within

3570-529: Is seen by the eyes, had a greater impact on people. Eadweard Muybridge 's Zoopraxiscope projected moving painted silhouettes based on his chronophotographic work . The only Zoopraxiscope disc with actual photographs was made as an early form of stop motion . Less-known predecessors, such as Jules Duboscq 's Bioscope (patented in 1852) were not developed to project the moving images. A Polish inventor Kazimierz Prószyński built his camera and projecting device, called Pleograph , in 1894, before those made by

3675-422: Is supported by the diagrams of the Kinetoscope that accompany the 1891 patent application, in particular, diagram 2. A side view, it does not illustrate the shutter, but it shows the impossibility of it fitting between the lamp and the film without a major redesign and indicates a space that seems suitable for it between the film strip and the lens. Evidently, that major redesign took place, as Robinson's description

3780-758: The cinématographe in 1896, visiting places like Brussels , Bombay , London , Montreal , New York City , Palestine , and Buenos Aires . In 1896, only a few months after 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 . The brothers stated that "the cinema

3885-482: The Lumière brothers . Le Prince went missing in 1890, before he got around to give public demonstrations of the patented cameras and projectors he had been developing during the previous years. His short film known as Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) has later come to be regarded as the oldest film. William Friese-Greene patented a "machine camera" in 1889, which embodied many aspects of later film cameras. He displayed

3990-721: The Mutoscope Company 's projector, the Biograph, was released; better funded than its competitors and with superior image quality, by the end of the year it was allied with Keith and soon dominated the North American projection market. Departing the Vitascope operation after little more than a year—in which the Edison Company's film-related business made a $ 25,000 profit—Edison commissioned the development of his own projection systems,

4095-700: The birth of cinema . Either the techniques or the business models of earlier filmmakers proved to be less viable than the breakthrough presentations of the Lumières. The Lumière brothers were born in Besançon , France, to Charles-Antoine Lumière (1840–1911) and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small photographic portrait studio. Here were born Auguste, Louis and their daughter Jeanne. They moved to Lyon in 1870, where their two other daughters were born: Mélina and Francine. Auguste and Louis both attended La Martiniere ,

4200-443: The $ 150 that would have granted him an international copyright [ sic ]." As recently as 2004, Andrew Rausch stated that Edison "balked at a $ 150 fee for overseas patents" and "saw little commercial value in the Kinetoscope." Given that Edison, as much a businessman as an inventor, spent approximately $ 24,000 on the system's development and went so far as to build a facility expressly for moviemaking before his U.S. patent

4305-551: The Black Maria in mid-March 1894, was playing in the New Jersey resort town Asbury Park by summer. The town's founder, James A. Bradley, a real estate developer and leading member of the Methodist community, had recently been elected a state senator: "The Newark Evening News of 17 July 1894 reported that [Senator] Bradley...was so shocked by the glimpse of Carmencita's ankles and lace that he complained to Mayor Ten Broeck. The showman

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4410-628: The Broadway musical Broadway to Tokio (1900) is set inside the Eden Musée. Auguste and Louis Lumi%C3%A8re The Lumière brothers ( UK : / ˈ l uː m i ɛər / , US : / ˌ l uː m i ˈ ɛər / ; French: [lymjɛːʁ] ), Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas Lumière (19 October 1862 – 10 April 1954) and Louis Jean Lumière (5 October 1864 – 6 June 1948), were French manufacturers of photography equipment, best known for their Cinématographe motion picture system and

4515-610: The Development of the National Industry, in front of a small audience, one of whom was said to be Léon Gaumont , then director of the company Comptoir Géneral de la Photographie , the Lumières privately screened a single film, Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory . The main focus of the conference by Louis concerned the recent developments in the photographic industry, mainly the research on polychromy (colour photography). It

4620-492: The Eastman company for roll film. Three more orders for roll film were placed over the next five months. Only sporadic work was done on the Kinetoscope for much of 1890 as Dickson concentrated on Edison's unsuccessful venture into ore milling—between May and November, no expenses at all were billed to the lab's Kinetoscope account. By early 1891, however, Dickson and his new chief assistant, William Heise , had succeeded in devising

4725-577: The Eidoloscope debut. Before year's end, the Mutoscope team, using their Mutograph camera as a basis, developed a projector. At that point, North American orders for new Kinetoscopes had all but evaporated. By the beginning of 1896, Edison was turning his focus to the promotion of a projector technology, the Phantoscope , developed by young inventors Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat . The rights to

4830-582: The Exposition Universelle, Edison would have seen both the Théâtre Optique and the electrical tachyscope of German inventor Ottamar Anschütz. This disc-based projection device, also known as the Schnellseher ("quick viewer"), is often referred to as an important conceptual source for the development of the Kinetoscope. Its crucial innovation was to take advantage of the persistence of vision theory by using an intermittent light source to momentarily "freeze"

4935-545: The July 22 Science and the October 21 Scientific American , argues that one Kinetoscope did make it to the fair. Robinson, in contrast, argues that such "speculation" is "conclusively dismissed by an 1894 leaflet issued for the launching of the invention in London," which states, "the Kinetoscope was not perfected in time for the great Fair." Echoing Hendricks's position, fair historian Stanley Appelbaum states, "Doubt has been cast on

5040-405: The Kinetoscope a reality. Edison would take full credit for the invention, but the historiographical consensus is that the title of creator can hardly go to one man: While Edison seems to have conceived the idea and initiated the experiments, Dickson apparently performed the bulk of the experimentation, leading most modern scholars to assign Dickson with the major credit for turning the concept into

5145-481: The Kinetoscope also had a major impact in Europe; its influence abroad was magnified by Edison's decision not to seek international patents on the device, facilitating numerous imitations of and improvements on the technology. In 1895, Edison introduced the Kinetophone , which joined the Kinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph . Film projection, which Edison initially disdained as financially nonviable, soon superseded

5250-531: The Kinetoscope undoubtedly saw the Schnellseher under its deliberately deceptive name of The Electrical Wonder." Work proceeded, though slowly, on the Kinetoscope project. On October 6, a U.S. copyright was issued for a "publication" received by the Library of Congress consisting of "Edison Kinetoscopic Records." It remains unclear what film was awarded this, the first motion picture copyright in North America. By

5355-462: The Kinetoscope's individual exhibition model. Numerous motion picture systems developed by Edison's firm in later years were marketed with the name Projecting Kinetoscope . An encounter with the work and ideas of photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge appears to have spurred Thomas Edison to pursue the development of a motion picture system. On February 25, 1888, in Orange, New Jersey , Muybridge gave

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5460-421: The Kinetoscope's popularity by adding sound to its allure, many in the field were beginning to suspect that film projection was the next step that should be pursued. When Norman Raff communicated his customers' interest in such a system to Edison, he summarily rejected the notion: No, if we make this screen machine that you are asking for, it will spoil everything. We are making these peep show machines and selling

5565-629: The New York debut). Dissemination of the system proceeded rapidly in Europe, as Edison had left his patents unprotected overseas. The most likely reason was the technology's reliance on a variety of foreign innovations and a consequent belief that patent applications would have little chance of success. An alternative view, however, used to be popular: The 1971 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica , for instance, claims that Edison "apparently thought so little of his invention that he failed to pay

5670-559: The Projectoscope and then multiple iterations of the Projecting Kinetoscope, eventually targeting semiprofessional and amateur customers. At its peak, around 1907–8, the Projecting Kinetoscope commanded 30 percent of US projector sales. In 1912, Edison introduced the ambitious Home Projecting Kinetoscope, which employed a unique format of three parallel columns of sequential frames on one strip of film—the middle column ran through

5775-543: The United States, Edison filed another patent caveat, on November 2, which described a Kinetoscope based not just on a flexible filmstrip, but one in which the film was perforated to allow for its engagement by sprockets , making its mechanical conveyance much more smooth and reliable. The first motion picture system to employ a perforated image band was apparently the Théâtre Optique, patented by French inventor Charles-Émile Reynaud in 1888. Reynaud's system did not use photographic film, but images painted on gelatine frames. At

5880-529: The United States, may have been shot at this time (there is an unresolved debate over whether it was made in June 1889 or November 1890); known as Monkeyshines, No. 1 , it shows an employee of the lab in an apparently tongue-in-cheek display of physical dexterity. Attempts at synchronizing sound were soon left behind, while Dickson would also experiment with disc-based exhibition designs. The project would soon head off in more productive directions, largely impelled by

5985-402: The United States. New firms joined the Kinetoscope Company in commissioning and marketing the machines. The Kinetoscope exhibition spaces were largely, though not uniformly, profitable. After fifty weeks in operation, the Hollands' New York parlor had generated approximately $ 1,400 in monthly receipts against an estimated $ 515 in monthly operating costs; receipts from the Chicago venue (located in

6090-623: The beginning of 1895. The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn from the film business by 1905. They went on to develop the first practical photographic colour process, the Lumière Autochrome . Louis died on 6 June 1948 and Auguste on 10 April 1954. They are buried in a family tomb in the New Guillotière Cemetery in Lyon. On 22 March 1895 in Paris, at the Society for

6195-427: The coarseness of the silver bromide emulsion used on the cylinder became unacceptably apparent. Around June 1889, the lab began working with sensitized celluloid sheets, supplied by John Carbutt, that could be wrapped around the cylinder, providing a far superior base for the recording of photographs. The first film made for the Kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in

6300-495: The company's Kinetophone image and sound masters , the system was abandoned. Edison kinetoscopic record of a sneeze (aka Fred Ott's Sneeze ) : filmed c. Jan. 2–7, 1894; 5 seconds at 16 fps Athlete with wand : filmed Feb. 1894; 37 seconds at 16 fps Sandow (the one of these four films to be shown at the April 14 commercial premiere): filmed Mar. 6, 1894; 40 seconds at 16 fps Carmencita : filmed c. Mar. 10–16, 1894; 21 seconds at 30 fps As noted, Hendricks (1966) gives

6405-418: The date to establish priority for reasons of both patent protection and intellectual status. In any event, though film historian David Robinson claims that "the cylinder experiments seem to have been carried on to the bitter end" (meaning the final months of 1890), as far back as September 1889—while Edison was still in Europe, but corresponding regularly with Dickson—the lab definitely placed its first order with

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6510-486: The first commercially successful movie projection system. In mid-October, a Kinetoscope parlor opened in London. At the end of November, by which point New York City was host to half a dozen Kinetophone parlors and London to nearly as many, a venue with five machines opened in Sydney, Australia. By January 3, 25,000 filmgoers had paid the one-shilling fee (roughly equivalent to 25 cents, the same price for five film viewings as in

6615-423: The first for a "Kinetographic Camera", the second for the camera as well, and the third for an "Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects". In the first Kinetograph application, Edison stated, "I have been able to take with a single camera and a tape-film as many as forty-six photographs per second...but I do not wish to limit the scope of my invention to this high rate of speed...since with some subjects

6720-541: The first identifiable motion picture to receive a U.S. copyright. With commercial exploitation close at hand, on April 1, the motion picture operation was formally made the Kinetograph Department of the Edison Manufacturing Company , for which Edison appointed a new vice president and general manager: William E. Gilmore. Two weeks later, the Kinetoscope's epochal moment arrived. On April 14, 1894,

6825-475: The first was fixed), the Lathams signed famous heavyweight James J. Corbett , stipulating that his image could not be recorded by any other Kinetoscope company—the first movie star contract. In sum, seventy-five films were shot at the Edison facility in 1894. Just three months after the commercial debut of the motion picture came the first recorded instance of motion picture censorship . The film in question showed

6930-462: The high-speed stop-and-go film movement that would be the foundation for the next century of cinematography . On May 20, 1891, the first invitational demonstration of a prototype Kinetoscope was given at the laboratory for approximately 150 members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs. The New York Sun described what the club women saw in the "small pine box" they encountered: In

7035-513: The intermittent movement of the film strip behind [a camera] lens at considerable speed and under great tension without tearing ... stimulat[ing] the almost immediate solution of the essential problems of cinematic invention. Some scholars—in particular, Gordon Hendricks , in The Edison Motion Picture Myth (1961)—have argued that the lab began working on a filmstrip machine much later and that Dickson and Edison misrepresented

7140-470: The largest technical school in Lyon. They patented several significant processes leading up to their film camera, most notably film perforations (originally implemented by Émile Reynaud ) as a means of advancing the film through the camera and projector. The original cinématographe had been patented by Léon Guillaume Bouly on 12 February 1892. The cinématographe — a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures —

7245-421: The lens and thence through a peephole atop the cabinet. The device incorporated a rapidly spinning shutter whose purpose—as described by Robinson in his discussion of the completed version—was to "permi[t] a flash of light so brief that [each] frame appeared to be frozen. This rapid series of apparently still frames appeared, thanks to the persistence of vision phenomenon, as a moving image." The lab also developed

7350-532: The machine in the reverse direction from its neighbors. It was a commercial failure. Three years later, the Edison operation came out with its last substantial new film exhibition technology, a short-lived theatrical system called the Super Kinetoscope. Aside from the actual Edison Studios film productions, the company's most creative work in the motion picture field from 1897 on involved the use of Kinetoscope-related patents in threatened or actual lawsuits for

7455-416: The movie business himself, proceeding to make dozens of additional Kinetoscope reproductions. In this pursuit, and to make films for both the original device and its knockoffs, Paul and photographer Birt Acres —briefly Paul's business partner—would originate a number of important innovations in both camera and exhibition technology. Meanwhile, plans were advancing at the Black Maria to realize Edison's goal of

7560-494: The new Kinetoscope Company, which had contracted with Edison for their production; the firm, headed by Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon, included among its investors Andrew M. Holland, one of the entrepreneurial siblings, and Edison's former business chief, Alfred O. Tate. The ten films that comprise the first commercial movie program, all shot at the Black Maria and each running about 15 to 20 seconds, were descriptively titled: Barber Shop , Bertoldi (mouth support) (Ena Bertoldi,

7665-406: The new film. As for the Kinetoscope itself, there have been differing descriptions of the location of the shutter providing the crucial intermittent visibility effect. According to a report by inventor Herman Casler described as "authoritative" by Hendricks, who personally examined five of the six still-extant first-generation devices, "Just above the film,...a shutter wheel having five spokes and

7770-579: The phonograph turned on when viewing and off when stopped." While the surviving Dickson test involves live-recorded sound, certainly most, and probably all, of the films marketed for the Kinetophone were shot as silents, predominantly march or dance subjects; exhibitors could then choose from a variety of musical cylinders offering a rhythmic match. For example, three different cylinders with orchestral performances were proposed as accompaniments for Carmencita : "Valse Santiago", "La Paloma", and "Alma-Danza Spagnola". Even as Edison followed his dream of securing

7875-445: The popularity of the Kinetoscope with that of prizefighting . This led to a series of significant developments in the motion picture field: The Kinetograph was then capable of shooting only a 50-foot-long negative. At 16 frames per foot, this meant a maximum running time of 20 seconds at 40 frames per second (fps), the speed most frequently employed with the camera. At the rate of 30 fps that had been used on occasion as far back as 1891,

7980-502: The possibility of joining the zoopraxiscope with the Edison phonograph —a combination system that would play sound and images concurrently. No such collaboration was undertaken, but in October 1888, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the U.S. Patent Office announcing his plans to create a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear". It is clear that it

8085-450: The projection of each image; the goal was to facilitate the viewer's retention of many minutely different stages of a photographed activity, thus producing a highly effective illusion of constant motion. By late 1890, intermittent visibility would be integral to the Kinetoscope's design. The question of when the Edison lab began working on a filmstrip device is a matter of historical debate. According to Dickson, in mid-1889, he began cutting

8190-456: The purpose of financially pressuring or blocking commercial rivals. As far back as some of the early Eidoloscope screenings, exhibitors had occasionally shown films accompanied by phonographs playing appropriate, though very roughly timed, sound effects; in the style of the Kinetophone described above, rhythmically matching recordings were also made available for march and dance subjects. While Edison oversaw cursory sound-cinema experiments after

8295-472: The rate of 30 fps—easily the longest motion picture to date. Several weeks later, the film premiered at the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company's parlor at 83 Nassau Street in New York. A half-dozen expanded Kinetoscope machines each showed a different round of the fight for a dime, meaning 60 cents to see the complete bout. For a planned series of follow-up fights (of which the outcome of at least

8400-408: The reports of [the Kinetoscope's] actual presence at the fair, but these reports are numerous and circumstantial." Noting that the fair featured up to two dozen Anschütz Schnellsehers—some or all of a peephole, not projection, variety—film historian Deac Rossell asserts that their presence "is the reason that so many historical sources were confused for so long.... [A]nyone who made a clear claim to see

8505-580: The results at photographic societies in 1890 and developed further cameras but did not publicly project the results. Ottomar Anschütz 's Electrotachyscope projected very short loops of high photographic quality. Thomas Edison believed projection of films wasn't as viable a business model as offering the films in the "peepshow" kinetoscope device. Watching the images on the screen turned out to be much preferred by audiences. Thomas Edison 's Kinetoscope (developed by William Kennedy Dickson ), premiered publicly in 1894. Lauste and Latham's Eidoloscope

8610-400: The sale of viewing machines, films, and auxiliary items generated a profit of more than $ 85,000 for Edison's company. One of the new firms to enter the field was the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company (no relation to Raff and Gammon's Kinetoscope Company); the firm's partners, brothers Otway and Grey Latham, Otway's friend Enoch Rector , and their employer, Samuel J. Tilden Jr., sought to combine

8715-614: The short films they produced between 1895 and 1905, which places them among the earliest filmmakers. Their screening of a single film on 22 March 1895 for around 200 members of the Société d'encouragement pour l'industrie nationale (Society for the Development of the National Industry) in Paris was probably the first presentation of projected film . Their first commercial public screening on 28 December 1895 for around 40 paying visitors and invited relations has traditionally been regarded as

8820-472: The stiff celluloid sheets supplied by Carbutt into strips for use in such a prototype machine; in August, by his description, he attended a demonstration of George Eastman 's new flexible film and was given a roll by an Eastman representative, which was immediately applied to experiments with the prototype. As described by historian Marta Braun, Eastman's product was sufficiently strong, thin, and pliable to permit

8925-496: The success of The Great Train Robbery (1903) and other Edison Manufacturing Company productions, it was not until 1908 that he returned in earnest to the combined audiovisual concept that had first led him to enter the motion picture field. Edison patented a synchronization system connecting a projector and a phonograph, located behind the screen, via an assembly of three rigid shafts—a vertical one descending from each device, joined by

9030-624: The system had been acquired by Raff and Gammon, who redubbed it the Vitascope and arranged with Edison to present himself as its creator. The Vitascope premiered in New York in April and met with swift success, but was just as quickly surpassed by the Cinématographe of the Lumières, which arrived in June with the backing of Benjamin F. Keith and his circuit of vaudeville theaters . The Eidoloscope's prospects, meanwhile, were crippled by projection deficiencies and business disputes. In September 1896,

9135-418: The system was going to lose out to projected motion pictures. In its second year of commercialization, the Kinetoscope operation's profits plummeted by more than 95 percent, to just over $ 4,000. The Latham brothers and their father, Woodville , had been developing a film projection system, retaining the services of former Edison employee Eugene Lauste and benefiting secretly from Dickson's assistance while he

9240-469: The top of the box was a hole perhaps an inch in diameter. As they looked through the hole they saw the picture of a man. It was a most marvelous picture. It bowed and smiled and waved its hands and took off its hat with the most perfect naturalness and grace. Every motion was perfect.... The man was Dickson; the little movie, approximately three seconds long, is now referred to as Dickson Greeting . On August 24, three detailed patent applications were filed:

9345-460: The turn of the year, the Kinetoscope project would be reenergized. During the first week of January 1894, a five-second film starring an Edison technician was shot at the Black Maria; Fred Ott's Sneeze , as it is now widely known, was made expressly to produce a sequence of images for an article in Harper's magazine. Never intended for exhibition, it would become one of the most famous Edison films and

9450-460: The world's first, known as the Black Maria . Despite extensive promotion, a major display of the Kinetoscope, involving as many as twenty-five machines, never took place at the Chicago exposition. Kinetoscope production had been delayed in part because of Dickson's absence of more than eleven weeks early in the year with a nervous breakdown. Hendricks, referring to various accounts, including ones in

9555-449: Was a boxing match between Young Griffo and Charles Barnett, approximately eight minutes long. European inventors, most prominently the Lumières and Germany's Skladanowsky brothers, were moving forward with similar systems. Another challenge came from a new "peep show" device, the cheap, flip-book -based Mutoscope —another venture to which Dickson had secretly contributed while working for Edison and to which he devoted himself following

9660-420: Was a major producer of photographic products in Europe, but the brand name, Lumière, disappeared from the marketplace following merger with Ilford . Earlier moving images, for instance those of the phantasmagoria shows, the phénakisticope , the zoetrope and Émile Reynaud 's Théâtre Optique consisted of hand-drawn images. A system that could record photographic reality in motion, in a fashion much like it

9765-413: Was apparently abandoned. Early in 1892, steps began to make coin operation, via a nickel slot, part of the mechanics of the viewing system. Before the end of the year, the design of the Kinetoscope was essentially complete. The filmstrip, based on stock manufactured first by Eastman, and then, from April 1893, by New York's Blair Camera Co., was 1 3/8 inches wide; each vertically sequenced frame bore

9870-517: Was awarded, Rausch's interpretation is not widely shared by present-day scholars. Whatever the cause, two Greek entrepreneurs, George Georgiades and George Tragides, took advantage of the opening. Already successfully operating a pair of London movie parlors with Edison Kinetoscopes, they commissioned English inventor and manufacturer Robert W. Paul to make copies of them. After fulfilling the Georgiades–Tragides contract, Paul decided to go into

9975-459: Was demonstrated for members of the press on 21 April 1895, and opened to the paying public on Broadway on 20 May. They shot films up to twenty minutes long at speeds over thirty frames per second and showed them in many US cities. The Eidoloscope Company was dissolved in 1896 after various internal disputes. Max and Emil Skladanowsky , inventors of the Bioscop , had offered projected moving images to

10080-455: Was first semipublicly demonstrated to members of the National Federation of Women's Clubs invited to the Edison laboratory on May 20, 1891. The completed version was publicly unveiled in Brooklyn two years later, and on April 14, 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history took place in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture,

10185-471: Was further developed by the Lumières. The brothers patented their own version on 13 February 1895. The date of the recording of their first film is in dispute. In an interview with Georges Sadoul given in 1948, Louis claimed that he shot the film in August 1894 – before the arrival of the kinetoscope in France. This is questioned by historians, who consider that a functional Lumière camera did not exist before

10290-462: Was intended as part of a complete audiovisual system: "we may see & hear a whole Opera as perfectly as if actually present". In March 1889, a second caveat was filed, in which the proposed motion picture device was given a name, Kinetoscope, derived from the Greek roots kineto- ("movement") and scopos ("to view"). Edison assigned Dickson, one of his most talented employees, to the job of making

10395-454: Was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab in New Jersey also devised the Kinetograph , an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement , to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations. A Kinetoscope prototype

10500-463: Was much to Lumière's surprise that the moving black-and-white images retained more attention than the coloured stills. The Lumières gave their first paid public screening on 28 December 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This presentation consisted of the following 10 short films: Each film was up to 17 m (56 ft) long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds. The Lumières went on tour with

10605-454: Was quickly uncovered by the press. The presentation included 19 minutes of film interspersed with lantern slides . After the Eden Musee went bankrupt and closed in 1915, the name and select wax figure groupings, including those from the Chamber of Horrors, were purchased at auction and exhibited in Coney Island . The Coney Island Eden Musee was destroyed by fire in 1928. The opening of Act 1 of

10710-517: Was ready to be unveiled. The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope was held not at the Chicago World's Fair , as originally scheduled, but at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893. The first film publicly shown on the system was Blacksmith Scene (also known as Blacksmiths ); directed by Dickson and shot by Heise, it was produced at the new Edison moviemaking studio,

10815-491: Was soon operating in Paris, at 20 boulevard Poissonnière. One of the owners was a business associate of Antoine Lumière's, whom he gave a strip from Barber Shop and a request for cheaper alternatives to the expensive Edison-produced films he was showing. Along with the stir created by the Kinetoscope itself, this was one of the primary inspirations for the Lumière brothers , Antoine's sons, who would go on to develop not only improved motion picture cameras and film stock but also

10920-534: Was still in Edison's employ. A few weeks after he and Edison fell out, Dickson openly participated in an April 21 screening of the Latham group's new Eidoloscope for at least one member of the New York press, which historians describe as the first public film projection in the U.S. On May 20, in Lower Manhattan , the world's first run of commercial motion picture screenings began: the Eidoloscope show's prime attraction

11025-690: Was thereupon ordered to withdraw the offending film, which he replaced with Boxing Cats ." The following month, a San Francisco exhibitor was arrested for a Kinetoscope operation "alleged to be indecent." The group whose disgruntlement occasioned the arrest was the Pacific Society for the Suppression of Vice, whose targets included "illicit literature, obscene pictures and books, the sale of morphine, cocaine, opium, tobacco and liquors to minors, lottery tickets, etc.," and which proudly took credit for having "caused 70 arrests and obtained 48 convictions" in

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