xxxxxIt was Thomas
Edison, the American inventor of the phonograph in 1877
(Vb) and the electric light bulb two
years later, who gave the first demonstration of moving pictures
in 1891.
Expertly assisted by his chief engineer William Dickson, he
produced the Kinetoscope, a peephole apparatus which enabled one
person at a time to view a rapid succession of individual views.
By 1894 he had produced a large number of these machines and
installed them in cities across the United States and Europe. For
a modest payment they showed short sequences of different events,
such as boxing, wrestling, trapeze artists and dancing displays,
and these proved extremely popular. He then tried to add sound by
incorporating a phonograph, but he failed in the attempt. In the
meantime others -
THOMAS ALVA EDISON 1847 -
Acknowledgements
Edison: detail,
by the Bachrach Photographic Studios, founded in Baltimore in
1868. Image enhanced by the Belgian photographic restorer Michel
Vuijlsteke (b.1970). Kinetoscope:
publicity photograph c1895, artist unknown. Glenmont: date and artist unknown. Le Prince:
single frame of film taken in the City of Leeds, England, 1888 –
the 60mm film spools used by Le Prince, and the 20-
xxxxxThe first public
demonstration of motion pictures was given in 1891 by the company
owned by Thomas Alva Edison -
xxxxxItxwas in 1888, following his move to West Orange, New
Jersey, and the building of a large research laboratory there,
that Edison became interested in the idea of making moving
pictures. In October of that year he took out a patent describing
a device that would record and reproduce images in motion and “do
for the eye what a phonograph does for the ear”. Edison’s basic
work on the electro-
xxxxxThe first
showing of this peep-
xxxxxThese movies aroused such interest that in April 1894
Edison opened the first Kinetoscope Parlour in Broadway, New York,
where for 25 cents different films could be viewed on a number of
machines. It proved immensely popular. Soon parlours were opened
in the major cities, and peep-
xxxxxFollowing
the widespread success of the Kinetoscope, Edison turned his
attention to a movie system with sound attached. By the Spring of
1895 he and Dickson had produced the Kinetophone -
xxxxxEventually,
having seen his sales of the Kinetoscope plummet, Edison decided
to invest in a projection
system. He acquired a projector developed by two young American
inventors named Charles Frances Jenkins (1867-
xxxxxOther
projects at this time were more successful. In 1896 he designed a
Fluoroscope, an X-
xxxxxHe had one
long-
xxxxxAnd he also
enhanced the inventions of others, improving, for example, the
efficiency of the storage battery and the quality of both Bell’s
telephone and Roentgen’s X-
xxxxxBy the beginning of the 20th century Edison was a
very wealthy and a very famous man. Regarded as an eccentric
genius (an image he cultivated), he was a folk hero and a legend
in his own time. As a man who rose from rags to riches he was the
epitome of the “American Dream”, but in his private life he was
very much a loner, perhaps caused in part by the fact that he had
been partially deaf for most of his life. In the late 1920s his
health deteriorated and he died of complications caused by
diabetes in October 1931. He was buried behind his mansion,
Glenmont, in West Orange, New Jersey (illustrated). On the night of his funeral many people turned off
their lights for one minute to honour the Wizard of Menlo, the man
who had lit up the world. The house where he was born in Milan,
Ohio, is now the Edison Birthplace Museum, and there is the Thomas
Ava Edison Memorial and Museum in the town of Edison, New Jersey.
xxxxxIncidentally, in 1876 Edison was visited at Menlo Park by the Irish scientist Sir William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin). Apart from Henry Ford, Edison numbered among his acquaintances the French physicist Marie Curie, President Herbert Hoover, and Charles Lindbergh, the American aviator who made the first transatlantic flight in 1927. ……
xxxxx……xxWhen told on one occasion that, in the course of his research, thousands of his experiments had failed, Edison replied that they were not failures, they had served to tell him what things wouldn’t work! ……
xxxxx……xxEdison
married Mary Stilwell, a sixteen-
xxxxx……xxIn the summer of 1894 a
programme shown on a Kinetoscope, his peep-
xxxxx……xxEdison was deeply upset
in the late 1890s when, following his experiments to improve the
screen of Roentgen’s X-
xxxxxBut the birth of motion pictures
cannot be put down to one man alone. Whilst Edison was one of the
foremost pioneers in this field -
xxxxxAndxthere were many other advances, some of which failed
simply because of the lack of financial support. As early as 1877
the photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-
xxxxxThesexflickering attempts were poor at best, but in 1888 a French photographer named Louis
Le Prince (1842-
xxxxxThexmajor break through, as we have seen, came with the
advent of celluloid film, produced and
marketed by Eastman in 1889. This replaced glass and metal plates
and was a major step forward in the advent of motion pictures.
Even in this respect, however, there were others who deserve
recognition. As early as the mid-
French science teacher,
Émile Reynaud
(1844-
xxxxxThe birth
of the cinema eventually came in the mid-
xxxxxIncidentally, in Leeds, Le Prince’s achievement has not been
forgotten. A bronze memorial tablet, unveiled in 1930, is on
display at his one-
Vc-
Including:
Birth of the Motion
Picture Industry