Journal of Film Preservation - FIAF

own motion picture camera, filing a caveat outlining his intention with
the Patent Office that year.
The task of inventing the machine fell to Edison’s associate, William K.
L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device
for recording images, but it proved impractical. Success was achieved
with the use of a celluloid strip which was fed horizontally through a
machine. Patent applications were made by Edison in 1891 for a motion
picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion
picture peephole viewer.
Commercial Edison film production began in 1893. That year, a motion
picture studio, later dubbed the Black Maria (slang for the studio’s
resemblance to a police paddy wagon), was opened at Edison’s West
Orange laboratory complex. Short films were produced there using
vaudeville acts of the day. These included well-known performers such
as strongman Eugene Sandow, Spanish dancer Carmencita, and acts from
Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, including Annie Oakley and Native
American dancers.
The films were viewed in Kinetoscope parlors where the Kinetoscopes
were typically placed in a row. The patron would pay one sum to view
the entire row of machines. The first Kinetoscope parlor was opened by
the Holland Brothers on April 14, 1894, in New York.
The Edison laboratory conducted experiments to synchronize sound to
film, and, as a result, in 1895 the Kinetophone was introduced. To
operate the new invention, a patron looked through the peephole viewer
of a Kinetoscope while listening to a soundtrack piped through ear tubes
attached to a phonograph in the cabinet. The device did not offer exact
synchronization and ultimately failed to find a market. The film known
today as Dickson Experimental Sound Film in the Library’s collections is
one of the few examples still existing of this early foray into sound.
Edison was reluctant to develop a motion picture projector, feeling that
more profit was to be made with the peephole viewers. Competition
from other projection systems, however, persuaded Edison to market a
projector developed by Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins. It
was named the Vitascope and was presented to the world as an Edison
invention in April 1896. The Vitascope, along with other projection
systems, became a popular attraction in the variety and vaudeville
theaters in major cities across the United States. Motion pictures in short
time became starring attractions on the vaudeville bill. The Edison
Company soon developed its own projector known as the Projectoscope,
or Projecting Kinetoscope, in November 1896.
The task of inventing the machine fell to Edison’s associate, William K.
L. Dickson. Dickson initially experimented with a cylinder-based device
for recording images, but it proved impractical. Success was achieved
with the use of a celluloid strip which was fed horizontally through a
machine. Patent applications were made by Edison in 1891 for a motion
picture camera, called a Kinetograph, and a Kinetoscope, a motion
picture peephole viewer.
97 Journal of Film Preservation / 58/59 / 1999