Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

Unable to store the motion pictures, the Smithsonian gave the material,
which encompasses some of the earliest motion pictures ever made, to
the Library of Congress in 1989.
The Hendricks Collection also contains many of the early films of
vaudeville acts, which are also available on the web site, including acts
mentioned previously such as strongman Eugene Sandow and dancer
Carmencita.
The Edison films which the Library has from the years 1897 to 1905 are
largely from the Paper Print Collection. The very existence of many of
these films today is due to the way Edison copyrighted his films.
Registrations of films were sent to the Library in the form of positive
image paper photographs, often in the shape of rolls. These “paper
prints,” along with those received from other companies, accumulated to
form the collection known today as the Paper Print Collection. The first
ones were deposited by W. K. L. Dickson in August 1893 as still
photographs, not rolls, but have been lost over the years. Patrick
Loughney, head of the moving image section at the Library, has deduced
from his studies into the Paper Print Collection that this missing film
was most probably Carmencita. The earliest copyrighted Paper Print film
that still survives is Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7,
1894, which records Fred Ott, an Edison employee, sneezing comically
for the camera. (The Library’s web site features both an image of the
original copyright deposit—a card with individual shots lined up in
succession—and a moving version of the film.)
From October 1896 onward, the company began to regularly send
copyright deposits for its films to the Library. This was partly in an effort
to protect their films from being imitated, since many film companies at
this time frequently copied each other’s films. It should be noted,
however, that for the period from October 1896 to August 1897, the
Edison Company did not send in Paper Prints for copyright deposit, but
rather pieces of nitrate film. Thereafter, the company submitted Paper
Prints of complete films until 1905. After this, Edison only submitted a
few images from the films until 1911 when it abandoned the practice of
Paper Prints.
In the 1950s and 60s, Kemp Niver restored many of the Paper Prints to
16mm, working for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The Paper Prints had to be re-photographed a frame at a time in order to
turn them into films again. For the online web presentation, 35mm
prints of the Paper Print films have been used, many of them recently
made by the M/B/RS Motion Picture Conservation Center laboratory in
Dayton, Ohio. (Many of the prints used for the online presentation were
screened at a presentation of pre-1900 Edison films at the 1997
Pordenone Silent Film Festival.) The 35mm copies made by the
laboratory present a substantial improvement in quality over the 16mm
prints made during the 1950s and 60s, revealing added pictorial details
that were heretofore difficult to see.
The later Edison films featured on the web site come from two
100 Journal of Film Preservation / 58/59 / 1999