In the laboratory of Thomas Alva Edison the development of a practicable motion picture camera and viewing apparatus was really achieved. Leadership in the magic shadow art-science came with Edison once again to the United States and it has not left this country since. As a sequel America and motion pictures are linked in the minds of millions throughout the world.

Edison came to the motion picture through his Talking Phonograph, which he had developed not as an entertainment machine but as a device which would be a substitute for the court reporter and in other proceedings requiring exact recording. The motion picture experiments were made rather as a hobby and a diversion from more serious research and invention; the aim was to combine the automatic hearing and speaking of the phonograph with the sight and action of the motion picture.

Curiously enough Plateau, a man who went blind, made the first motion picture possible; Edison who was quite deaf made a great contribution to recording and reproducing sound.

Edison, in November of 1877, sent to his friend Alfred Hopkins, editor of the Scientific American, several sketches of models of his new invention in which “speech was capable of indefinite repetition from automatic records.” The next month a model was perfected. The incident was described as follows in the December 22, 1877, issue of the Scientific American: “Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, placed a little machine on our desk, turned the crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was well, and bid us a cordial good night.” It was noted that the sound was fully audible to a dozen members of the staff who gathered around. The writer also noted, “When it becomes possible to magnify the sound, as it doubtless will, the witness in court will have his own testimony repeated. The testator will repeat his own will.”

The editor of the Scientific American concluded his comment on the Edison “Talking” phonograph by saying: “It is already possible to throw stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view of an audience (i.e., still pictures). Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit their voices and it would be difficult to carry the illusion of real presence much further.”

The description of the Edison phonograph attracted wide attention. The article referred to above was quoted fully in Nature, a British publication. This led Wordsworth Donisthorpe to set down the first complete plan of the talking motion picture. Others, of course, had had the idea but up to that time the plan had never been expressed so clearly and completely.

Wordsworth Donisthorpe, born in 1847, was an English lawyer who throughout life maintained a lively interest in many affairs. He was an outspoken individualist, being a firm believer in local government. He wrote books on such subjects as Law in a Free State, and Love and Law, as well as on scientific matters. When he designed his device, the Kinesigraph, he was living at Princes Park, Liverpool.

After reading about Edison’s phonograph, Donisthorpe wrote to the Nature magazine and referred to the idea of combining the phonograph and still projection suggested by the Editor of the Scientific American. Donisthorpe quoted that comment and then said:

It is not known whether or not Edison read Donisthorpe’s suggestion. At any rate, it was ten years, not till 1887, that Edison decided to see about trying to combine the phonograph, greatly improved by this time, and a motion picture apparatus.

After completing improvements on the phonograph in 1886 and awaiting the opening of new laboratory quarters, Edison found himself with some idle moments. Sometime, in the middle or late part of 1887 Edison started work on what was to become his Kinetograph, the first motion picture camera that could photograph a few seconds of action at a time, and the Kinetoscope, the popular peep-show film device which brought the magic shadow art before the modern public and opened the way for the establishment of the motion picture industry.

Edison was assisted in his motion picture experiments by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, a man who had about the same relation to Edison as George Demeny had with Marey in France. In keeping with the Demeny tradition, Dickson eventually broke with his master and engaged in controversy over priority of ideas and actual contributions to various developments. But Edison and Marey both supplied the ideas and directed the work, while Dickson and Demeny were responsible for carrying out the experiments. Both contributed importantly.

Edison had employed Dickson as a young man, just after he came from England to the United States, and he was a trusted associate, having first been with Edison in the installation of the underground wires in New York City. In 1887 Dickson was called to Edison’s private laboratory and given two major projects to supervise: (1) a magnetic device for separating ores, and (2) a device to combine the sounds of the phonograph and pictures.

Late in 1887, in “Room Five” of the Edison Private Laboratory, Dickson started to work on Edison’s ideas for a motion picture device. The first efforts were centered on a cylinder recording system, analogous to the cylinder phonograph which Edison preferred to the disk type. He did not bother to patent the disk phonograph style and thereby lost a fortune as he did in other patent matters, including foreign rights to his motion picture camera and peep-show apparatus. The first Edison moving pictures were extremely tiny and had to be inspected through a microscope arrangement. Around 1870 Talbot, the photographic pioneer, in England had done some work on a similar system. The results of Edison’s experiments in this connection were not successful.

Next, during 1888 or early 1889, Edison turned to celluloid, made by the Hyatt Company in Newark, and adapted to photographic purposes by Carbutt in Philadelphia. This material was found to be too thick to be rolled conveniently on reels, and did not make a good photographic base. Edison found that notches or perforations were needed to keep the film passing through the camera and viewing device at a uniform rate. He first used notches on the bottom, and finally four perforations on each side for each picture or frame. Edison’s arrangement has continued as the work standard.

Edison looked around for a more suitable substance on which to mount the pictures—the age-old need. He found it in film just being manufactured for the first time by George Eastman at Rochester, N. Y. An order was placed and the solution appeared at hand.

For several years Eastman had been seeking a suitable substance for his Kodak cameras in order to make photography simple and foolproof and make widespread amateur use possible. For a time his “roller photography” system used paper rolls coated with a detachable photographic emulsion. This was an improvement over glass plates but the method was cumbersome as the Kodaks had to be returned to Rochester for reloading and processing. Early in 1889 Eastman found the answer in a flexible photographic base—a plastic—and film was born. In August of that year manufacturing began in his Court Street plant in Rochester. The film strips were prepared on glass sheets mounted on 100-foot long tables. Eastman applied for his film patent on December 10, 1889.

When Edison returned from the Paris Exposition of 1889, where Marey had shown him motion picture photographs mounted on a large disk and projected, and also illuminated by an electric flash as in the Tachyscope of Anschütz, Dickson was able to announce success in the motion picture project. That was in October, 1889.

It can never be decided exactly what was shown at the first demonstration, because the interests of Edison and Dickson split and the testimony was contradictory. Nothing was done about it for nearly two years, and the peep-show film machines did not go on public display until the Spring of 1894.

Dickson claimed that the pictures, synchronized with a phonograph, were projected screen size in the Fall of 1889. Edison said there was no projection at the time. Some time between 1889 and 1894, projection experiments were made but Edison did not think screen projection of motion pictures would be commercially successful, believing that a few machines would exhaust the world’s demand and once the novelty wore off the business would die. It is also possible that he was not satisfied with the experiments at projection because they must have been quite imperfect. The Edison magic-disk device had continuously running film and a shutter revolving at the rate of ten times a second. No light source then available would give projection with that set-up. Intermittent movement was required for efficient operation in the projector as in the camera.

Harper’s Weekly of June 13, 1891, carried a two-page story on the new Edison invention. The device was not claimed to be perfected but one having very wonderful possibilities. The writer said, “To say that the Kinetograph can be nothing more than a marvelous toy would be nasty.”

Edison said, “All that I have done is to perfect what has been attempted before, but did not succeed. It’s just that one step that I have taken.” On August 24, 1891, Edison applied for an American patent but decided not to invest the required sum, approximately $150, to make foreign applications. Too often in the past he found that a patent application by him was simply a form of general advertising to his imitators and competitors to start using his newest invention.

In 1891 the Kinetograph of Edison was not perfected or highly regarded. In the Engineering News of May 30, 1891, a brief note read:

That last observation was very true for the time being.

In late May of 1891 an indifferent account of the device was cabled to the London Times by its New York correspondent. The matter was commented upon in the Engineering magazine of London for June 5, 1891. That publication observed that since the time of the invention of the telephone there had been efforts to do for sight what the telephone did for sound. Of Edison’s invention of the motion picture camera and viewer it was said, “It is a matter of much less importance and much less originality than thought.” It was asserted that it would not be possible to photograph interiors at the rate of 46 pictures per second. But Edison was doing just that in his first motion picture studio.

In the early part of 1893 it was decided to market commercially the peep-show motion picture devices. After a year’s postponement, the Chicago World’s Fair was scheduled to open in the Spring of 1893 and this was thought an ideal place for the debut of the apparatus. In January of 1893 the famous “Black Maria” Edison Studio was constructed chiefly of tar paper at a cost of about $600, and the first commercial films made. Dickson was producer, director, cameraman and laboratory expert. Fred Ott, a laboratory mechanic, and his sneeze were among the first actors and film “acts.” Other subjects included dancers and similar entertainment subjects of a vaudeville character, together with scenic views.

The debut of the projection apparatus had been heralded long before it actually arrived. The World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated, published for the Chicago Fair of 1893, said:

Edison’s projection apparatus was not perfected by the time of the Fair or indeed for several years afterwards. Even the peep-show Kinetoscope machines had not been manufactured in sufficient number for exhibition there. The mechanic on the job was reported to have spent too much time at the local bar instead of working in the West Orange laboratory. During the Fair Edison’s agents waited for the first shipment of the Kinetoscopes but none arrived in time.

The patent applications made in 1891 by Edison for “an apparatus for exhibiting photographs of moving objects” and his Kinetograph camera were granted in the Spring of 1893.

The premiere of Edison’s Kinetoscope did not take place until April 14, 1894. That first night was one of the most significant for magic shadows because out of the Kinetoscope and the Kinetograph camera evolved the modern motion picture devices.

Edison supplied the peep-show Kinetoscope to his agents, Raff & Gammon at $200 each, and they were retailed to showmen at prices from $300 to $350. Andrew M. Holland, a Canadian, acquired ten Kinetoscopes and opened up the first Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York City. The location previously was occupied by a shoe store and a half century later it was again a shoe store. (Illustration on opposite page.)

The Kinetoscopes on Broadway were successful. $120 was taken in the first night. The original show of films was a kind of “double feature” in that the spectator was charged 25¢ to see the second line of five Kinetoscopes. The films included the famous “Fred Ott’s Sneeze.”

In the Century Magazine for June, 1894, there was an article by Dickson and Antonia Dickson on “Edison’s Invention of the Kinetophonograph.” Edison wrote a forward which said in part that he had the idea that it was possible to devise a sight and sound combination apparatus in 1887. “This idea, the germ of which came from the little toy called the Zoetrope (i.e., the Plateau-Stampfer magic disk) and the work by Muybridge, Marie (i.e., Marey) and others has now been accomplished, so that every change of facial expression can be recorded and reproduced life-size. The Kinetoscope is only a small model illustrating the present stage of progress but with each succeeding month new possibilities are brought into view.” Edison then prophesied that with his work and that of others “grand opera can be given at the Metropolitan Opera House at New York without any material change from the original, and with artists and musicians long since dead.”

On June 16, 1894, the Electrical World reported on “The Kinetophonograph” and on the nickel-in-the-slot peep-show models on display at the Broadway store. The review was not enthusiastic even then. It concluded: “As to the future of this most ingenious and interesting bit of mechanism, time only will demonstrate whether it is to be a new scientific toy or an invention of real practical value.”

Time did demonstrate all that and more.

The reaction to Edison’s Kinetograph in Paris, showplace of the world, was much more enthusiastic than in New York. In La Nature the wonderful mechanical perfection of the film peep-show apparatus was praised with special note given to the fact that it was driven by electricity. The Werner firm had opened a demonstration of the Kinetoscope at 20 Boulevard Poissonnière, Paris, and the machines were in use all day and every evening.

The Kinetoscope also went on display in Oxford Street, London, in October, 1894, brought there from New York by two Greeks, George Georgiades and George Trajedis. From the showings of the Edison peep-show in New York, Paris, and London, there arose an increased interest in the motion picture. Out of these demonstrations grew projection machines which at last brought the shadow art-science before the world in full development.