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Kinetoscope

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File:KinetoscopeCutaway.jpg
Interior view of Kinetoscope with peephole viewer at top of cabinet.
For the mid-20th-century television technology, see kinescope.

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. Though not a movie projector—it was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components—the Kinetoscope introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video: it creates 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 was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab 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.

In April 1894, the first commercial exhibition of motion pictures in history was given in New York City, using ten Kinetoscopes. Instrumental to the birth of American movie culture, 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. Film projection soon superseded both the basic exhibition system and the Kinetophone—joining the Kinetoscope with a cylinder phonograph—introduced in 1895. Many of the projection systems developed by Edison's firm in later years would use the Kinetoscope name.

Development

Sheet of images from one of the three Monkeyshines films (ca. 1889–90) produced as tests of an early version of the Kinetoscope.

An encounter with the work and ideas of photographic pioneer Eadweard Muybridge appears to have spurred Edison to pursue the development of a motion picture system. On February 25, 1888, Edison attended a demonstration of Muybridge's zoopraxiscope, a device that projected sequential images drawn around the edge of a glass disc, producing the illusion of motion. Two days later, the inventors met at Edison's laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey; Muybridge later described how he proposed a collaboration to join his device 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, a so-called 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 was intended as part of a complete audiovisual system: "we may see & hear a whole Opera as perfectly as if actually present."[1] 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 William Dickson, one of his most talented employees and the Edison lab's official photographer, to the job of making the Kinetoscope a reality. While Edison would take full credit for the invention, 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 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.[2]

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 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.[3] 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, 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.[4] The first film made for the Kinetoscope, and apparently the first motion picture ever produced on photographic film in 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.[5] Attempts at synchronizing sound were soon left behind, while Dickson would also experiment with disc-based exhibition designs.[6]

An acre in size, Edison's exhibit at the Exposition Universelle included an entire electrical power station. (Smithsonian Institution/William J. Hammer Collection)

The project would soon head off in more productive directions, largely impelled by a trip of Edison's to Europe and the Exposition Universelle in Paris, for which he departed August 2, 1889.[7] 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 twelve frames per second.[8] Upon his return to 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.[9] 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.[10] At the Exposition Universelle, Edison would have seen both the Théâtre Optique and the electrical tachyscope of German inventor Ottamar Anschütz.[11] This disc-based projection device 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" 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 lighting would be integral to the Kinetoscope's design.[12]

The question of when the Edison lab began working on a filmstrip device is a matter of historical debate. According to Dickson, in the summer of 1889, he began cutting 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.[13] As described by historian Marta Braun, Eastman's product

was sufficiently strong, thin, and pliable to permit 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 esssential problems of cinematic invention.[14]

File:KinetographKayser2.jpg
Charles Kayser of the Edison lab seated behind the Kinetograph. Portability was not among the camera's virtues.

Some scholars—in particular, Gordon Hendricks, author of 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 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 the Eastman company for roll film, which was followed by another order in February 1890.[15] 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.[16] By early 1891, however, Dickson, his new chief assistant, William Heise, and another lab employee, Charles Kayser, had succeeded in devising a functional strip-based film viewing system. In the new design, whose mechanics were housed in a wooden cabinet, a loop of horizontally configured 19 mm (3/4 inch) 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 the lens and thence through a peephole atop the cabinet. As described by Robinson, a rapidly spinning shutter "permitted 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."[17] The lab also developed 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 the high-speed stop-and-go film movement that would be the foundation for the next century of cinematography.[18]

File:ButterflyDance.jpg
35 mm filmstrip of the Edison production Butterfly Dance (ca. 1895), featuring Annabelle Whitford Moore, in the format that would become standard for both still and motion picture photography around the world.

On May 20, 1891, the first public 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 clubwomen saw in the "small pine box" they encountered:

In 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....[19]

The man was Dickson; the little movie, approximately three seconds long, is now referred to as Dickson Greeting. On August 24, detailed patent applications were filed for both a "Kinetographic Camera" and an "Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects."[20] In the 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 a speed as low as thirty pictures per second or even lower is sufficient."[21] The Kinetoscope application also included a plan for a stereoscopic film projection system that was apparently abandoned.[22]

In the spring of the following year, steps began to make coin operation, via a nickel slot, part of the mechanics of the viewing system.[23] By autumn, the design of the Kinetoscope was essentially complete. The filmstrip, based on stock manufactured first by Eastman, and then, from April 1893 onward, by New York's Blair Camera Co., was 35 mm (1 3/8 inches) wide; each vertically sequenced frame bore a rectangular image and four perforations on each side.[24] Within a few years, this basic format 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 the new film.[25] As for the Kinetoscope itself, there is a disagreement over the final design and location of the shutter: Robinson says that it had "a narrow slit" and was positioned "between the lamp and film." Patent historian Stephen van Dulken describes a shutter with "slits" and says that it was located substantially higher, between the lens and the peephole.[26] The 1891 patent application does not resolve these differences. It describes a shutter that "has one or more openings" and never describes its location.[27] The accompanying diagrams variously suggest that it might be placed either between the film and the lens or, as Van Dulken says, between the lens and the peephole; there is no way it could have been situated between the lamp and the film without a major redesign.[28]

On February 21, 1893, a patent was issued for the system that governed the intermittent movement of film in the Kinetograph.[29] The escapement-based mechanism would be superseded within 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.[30] The exhibition device itself—which, despite erroneous accounts to the contrary, never employed intermittent film movement, only intermittent lighting—was finally awarded its patent, number 493,426, on March 14.[31] The Kinetoscope was ready to be unveiled.

Going public

File:BlackMaria.jpg
Construction on the imposing Black Maria began in December 1892. In order to take full advantage of sunlight, the tar paper–lined studio was equipped with a hinged, flip-up roof and the entire structure could rotate on a track. "It obeys no architectural rules," declared Dickson, who found it "productive of the happiest effects in the films."[32]

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 (aka Blacksmiths); directed by Dickson and shot by Heise, it was produced at the new Edison moviemaking studio, known as the Black Maria.[33] Despite extensive promotion, the Kinetoscope never made it to the Chicago fair, and the planned commercialization of the device was delayed for various reasons, including the bank panic of 1893, which led Edison to curtail many of his operations, and his renewed focus on iron ore work.[34] By the turn of the year, however, 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 the first motion picture to receive a U.S. copyright. Three months later, the Kinetoscope's true epochal moment arrived.

On April 14, 1894, 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 machines were purchased from 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, were descriptively titled: Barber Shop, Bertholdi (mouth support) (Ena Bertholdi, a British vaudeville contortionist), Bertholdi (table contortion), Blacksmiths, Cock Fight, Highland Dance, Horse Shoeing, Sandow (Eugen Sandow, a German strongman), Trapeze, and Wrestling.[35] As historian Charles Musser describes, a "profound transformation of American life and performance culture" had begun.[36]

File:KinetoscopeParlor.jpg
A San Francisco Kinetoscope parlor, ca. 1894–95.

Twenty-five cents for no more than 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 followng year, a 25-cent entrance fee covered admission to three rides, a performing sea lion show, and a dance hall.[37] 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 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 a Masonic temple) were substantially lower, about $700 a month, though presumably operating costs were lower as well.[38] For each machine, Edison's business itself charged $200 to the Kinetoscope Company and other distributors, which would use them in their own exhibition parlors or sell them to independent exhibitors for $300 or more. During the Kinetoscope's first eleven months of commercialization, the sale of viewing machines, films, and auxiliary items generated a profit of more than $85,000 for Edison's company.[39]

One of the new firms to enter the field was the Kinetoscope Exhibition 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 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), at that point the slowest shooting speed being used, according to published sources. In fact, there is major disagreement as to the intended rate and maximum proper duration of the first Kinetoscope films to be exhibited: Charles Musser claims 40 fps was the standard. Richard Burns describes a "picture rate of 46 frames per second [that] restricted the viewing time to about 15 seconds." In its online catalog, the Library of Congress lists Sandow as having been shot at 16 fps and lasting 40 seconds.[40] Even at the slowest of these rates, the running time would not have been enough to accommodate a satisfactory exchange of fisticuffs; the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope were modified, possibly with Rector's assistance, so they could manage 150-foot-long filmstrips.[41]

File:LeonardCushing.gif
Two frames of the June 1894 Leonard–Cushing bout. Each of the six one-minute rounds recorded by the Kinetograph was made available to exhibitors for $22.50. Customers who watched the whole fight saw Leonard score a knockdown at the end.

On June 14, a match with abbreviated rounds was staged between boxers Michael Leonard and Jack Cushing at the Black Maria. Close to a thousand feet worth of images were shot at the relatively slow rate of 30 fps—easily the longest motion picture to date. In August 1894, the film premiered at the Kinetoscope Exhibition Company's parlor at 83 Nassau Street in New York. Six expanded Kinetoscope machines each showed a different round of the fight; where before the novelty of the motion picture medium had been the primary attraction of the Kinetoscope, here the film itself was adjudged a major success, qualifying it as the first "hit movie." For a planned series of follow-up fights (of which the outcome of at least 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.[42]

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 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.[43] The Kinetoscope movie of her dance, shot at 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:[44] "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 was thereupon ordered to withdraw the offending film, which he replaced with Boxing Cats."[45] The following month, a San Francisco exhibitor was arrested for a Kinetoscope operation "alleged to be indecent."[46] The group whose outcry led to 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 a recent two-month span.[47]

The Kinetoscope was also gaining notice on the other side of the Atlantic. In the summer of 1894, it was demonstrated at 20, boulevard Poissonnière in Paris; this was one of the primary inspirations to the Lumière brothers, who would go on to develop the first commercially successful movie projection system.[48] On October 17, 1894, the first Kinetoscope parlor outside the United States opened in London.[49] 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 the $150 that would have granted him an international copyright [sic]."[50] 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."[51] 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 was awarded, Rausch's interpretation is not widely shared by present-day scholars.[52] 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 the movie business himself, proceeding to make dozens of additional Kinetoscope reproductions. Paul's work would result in a series of important innovations in both camera and exhibition technology.[53] Meanwhile, plans were advancing at the Black Maria to realize Edison's goal of a motion picture system uniting image with sound.

Kinetophone

File:Kinetophone1.jpg
The 1895 version of the Kinetophone in use, showing the earphones that lead to the cylinder phonograph within the cabinet.

The Kinetophone (aka Phonokinetoscope) was an early attempt by Edison and Dickson to create a sound-film system. The first known movie made as 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 movie made expressly for the Kinetophone that survives. In March 1895, Edison offered the device for sale; involving no technological innovations, it was a Kinetoscope whose 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.[54] Though a Library of Congress educational website states, "The picture and sound were made somewhat synchronous by connecting the two with a belt,"[55] 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, "[O]nly 45 Kinetophones were made. They did NOT play synchronously other than the phonograph turned on when viewing and off when stopped."[56] Though the surviving Dickson test involves live-recorded sound, it appears that most, perhaps all, of the films marketed for the Kinetophone were march or dance subjects filmed as silents; exhibitors could then choose from a variety of musical cylinders offering a rhythmic match.[57] For example, three different cylinders with orchestral performances were proposed as accompaniments for Carmencita: "Valse Santiago," "La Paloma," and "Alma-Danza Spagnola."[58]

Even as Edison pursued his dream of securing 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, the great inventor 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 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.[59]

Under continuing pressure from Raff, Edison eventually conceded to investigate the possibility of developing a projection system. He seconded one of his lab's technicians to the Kinetoscope Company to initiate the work, without informing Dickson. Dickson's ultimate discovery of this move appears to have been one of the central factors leading to his break with Edison that occured in spring 1895.[60]

Projecting Kinetoscopes

File:EdisonAdCa1900.jpg
As seen in this ad from the first decade of the 1900s, years before the development of the compact Home Projecting Kinetoscope, Edison marketed an essentially theatrical 35 mm Projecting Kinetoscope for domestic use.

Over the course of 1895, it became increasingly clear that the Kinetoscope was going to lose out on one end to projected motion pictures and, on the other, to a new "peep show" device, the cheap, flip-book-based Mutoscope. In its second year of commercialization, the Kinetoscope operation's profits plummeted by more than 95 percent, to just over $4,000.[61] The Latham brothers and their father, Woodville, had retained the services of former Edison employee Eugene Lauste and then, in April 1895, Dickson himself to develop a film projection system. On May 20, in New York City, the new Eidoloscope was used for the first commercial screening of a motion picture, four minutes of pugilism between Young Griffo and Charles Barnett.[62] European inventors, most prominently the Lumières and Germany's Skladanowsky brothers, were moving forward with similar systems. By the beginning of the new year, Edison had turned his attention to promoting a projector technology, the Phantoscope, developed by young inventors Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat and acquired by Raff and Gammon; the businessmen redubbed it the Vitascope and arranged with Edison to present himself as its creator.[63] With Dickson having left his employ, the Kinetophone was soon mothballed and Edison suspended work on sound cinema for an extended period. Departing the Vitascope operation after little more than a year, Edison commissioned the development of his own projection systems, the Projectoscope and then multiple iterations of the Projecting Kinetoscope. In 1912, he introduced the ambitious and expensive Home Projecting Kinetoscope, which employed three parallel strips of 22 mm film. Four years later, the Edison operation came out with its last substantial new film exhibition technology, a short-lived theatrical system called the Super Kinetoscope. Much of the Edison 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 the purpose of financially pressuring or blocking commercial rivals.[64]

As far back as the Vitascope days, some exhibitors had screened 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.[65] While Edison oversaw cursory sound-cinema experiments after 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. Two years later, he supervised a press demonstration at the laboratory of a system with some degree of synchronization between sound and projected film.[66] In 1913, Edison finally introduced the new Kinetophone—like the 1895 system, it used a cylinder phonograph, now connected to a Projecting Kinetoscope via a set of belt pulleys. While it met with great acclaim in the short term, 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 the company's Kinetophone image and sound masters, the system was abandoned.[67]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ Quoted in Robinson (1997), who gives the date of the filing as October 17 (p. 23). Braun (1992) reports it as October 8 (p. 188).
  2. ^ History of Edison Motion Pictures: The Kinetoscope part of the Library of Congress/Inventing Entertainment educational website. Retrieved 10/22/06.
  3. ^ Braun (1992), pp. 188, 404 n. 44.
  4. ^ Rossell (1998), pp. 63–64; Braun (1992), pp. 189, 404 n. 47. Robinson (1997) says the lab ordered the Carbutt sheets on June 25, 1889, and that they were "marketed in 20" x 50"" size. (p. 27). Spehr (2000) says (a) the lab received them on that date, (b) they were "11 by 14" inches in size (a figure with which Braun, op. cit., agrees), (c) sheets from another supplier, Allen & Rowell, arrived on the same date, and (d) sheets from yet another source had been received in May. It was Carbutt's sheets, according to Spehr's report of Dickson's recollections, that were used in the cylinder experiments (p. 23 n. 22).
  5. ^ There is also a question about which Edison employee appears in the film. If the earlier date is correct, it is John Ott; if the latter, G. Sacco Albanese. See Edison: The Invention of the Movies introduction to Monkeyshines, No. 1 for the Kino Video DVD release.
  6. ^ Dickson (1907), part 2.
  7. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 27.
  8. ^ Baldwin (2001), pp. 208–209. Baldwin describes the meeting as taking place in mid-September (p. 209); Burns (1998) says it was August (p. 73). See also Braun (1992), p. 189.
  9. ^ Musser (1994), p. 66; Spehr (2000), p. 8.
  10. ^ Rossell (1998), p. 21; Charles-Émile Reynaud biographical essay by Stephen Herbert, part of the Who's Who of Victorian Cinema website. Retrieved 10/23/06.
  11. ^ Braun (1992), p. 189.
  12. ^ Burns (1998) claims that "in a patent dated 20 May 1889 Edison and Dickson used the same general arrangement [as Anschütz] of continuous movement and momentary light flashes in their viewing device, the kinetoscope" (p. 73). It is clear that Burns's dating is wildly incorrect and that he likely acquired the May 20 date from the first public demonstration of the Kinetoscope in 1891.
  13. ^ Spehr (2000), pp. 7, 23 n. 21–22.
  14. ^ Braun (1992), p. 155.
  15. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 29; Spehr (2000), pp. 7–8, 23 n. 24.
  16. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 28.
  17. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 34.
  18. ^ Gosser (1977), pp. 206–207; Dickson (1907), part 3.
  19. ^ Quoted in Robertson (2001), p. 5.
  20. ^ Edison (1891a), p. 1 [p. 333 in Light and Movement]; Edison (1891b), p. 1 [p. 339 in Light and Movement].
  21. ^ Edison (1891a), p. 1 [p. 333 in Light and Movement].
  22. ^ Edison (1891b), pp. 2–3, diagram 4 [pp. 340–341, 345 in Light and Movement].
  23. ^ Spehr (2000), pp. 13.
  24. ^ Spehr (2000), pp. 11–14. The filmstock sent by the manufacturers was actually 1 9/16 inches wide; it was trimmed and perforated at the lab. Reports that either Eastman or Blair provided 70 mm stock that was cut in half and spliced at the lab are incorrect. One recent book that makes this mistaken claim (along with other poorly sourced descriptions of the Kinetoscope's development) is A. Michael Noll's Principles of Modern Communications Technology (Boston and London: Artech House, 2001; p. 88). Braun (1992) makes the same error (p. 190). See Spehr (2000), pp. 7–8, 12, for details on the width of the film supplied by Eastman to Edison.
  25. ^ Musser (1994), p. 72.
  26. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 34; Van Dulken (2004), p. 64. Braun (1992) describes a "revolving spoked shutter that had a slit in the periphery of one of the spokes (p. 191).
  27. ^ Edison (1891b), p. 1 [p. 339 in Light and Movement].
  28. ^ Edison (1891b), diagrams 1, 2 [pp. 342, 343 in Light and Movement]. Specifically, diagram 1, an overhead view of the apparatus looking down on the horizontally running filmstrip, indicates that the shutter passes over the film—it tends to suggest that it goes over the lens as well, though not necessarily. Diagram 2, a side view, does not indicate the shutter at all. However, it shows the impossibility of it fitting between the lamp and the film and indicates a space that seems suitable for it between the film and the lens. A fourth diagram [p. 344 in Light and Movement] shows Edison's proposed stereoscopic film projection system: here the shutter is definitively placed between the projection lens and the screen; in an alternate configuration, depicted in an insert diagram, the shutter may run through "a slit in the body of the lens" itself (p. 2 [p. 340 in Light and Movement]). A simplified version of Edison (1891b), diagram 1—lacking both diagram key numbers and patent application data—is available [online http://www.victorian-cinema.net/kinetoscope1.jpg]. The large dotted circle represents the shutter.
  29. ^ There are significant differences in the way leading scholars describe the awarding of the Kinetograph patent. Robinson (1997) says that one was issued on February 21, 1893 (p. 38). Braun (1992) states, "except for the device used to stop and start the moving film, which was granted a patent in 1893, all the parts of the application describing the camera were ultimately disallowed because of previous inventors' claims" (p. 191). Spehr (2000) says that in fact a full Kinetograph patent was awarded, but not until August 31, 1897 (p. 18). Van Dulken (2004) concurs with the date of 1897, citing the patent number as U.S. 589168 (p. 64). Spehr and van Dulken's specific assertions are supported by both Musser (1994; p. 239) and this reproduction of the Kinetograph patent diagram part of the Who's Who in Victorian Cinema website. Retrieved 10/29/06. (Note that van Dulken makes a total botch of describing the Kinetoscope and Kinetograph patent history in his earlier Inventing the 19th Century: 100 Inventions that Shaped the Victorian Age from Aspirin to the Zeppelin [New York: New York University Press, 2001; p. 126].) The facts in sum are (a) a patent solely for the intermittent movement apparatus was issued in 1893; (b) many other elements of the original patent application were successfully challenged; and (c) a patent for a complete Kinetograph camera, one largely different from that described in the original application, was issued in 1897.
  30. ^ Salt (1992), p. 32. As Salt describes, subsequent, post-Kinetoscope models of the Edison camera incorporated the Maltese cross.
  31. ^ Edison (1891b), p. 1 [p. 339 in Light and Movement]; Robinson (1997), pp. 38, 54–55; Musser (1994), p. 93; Münsterberg (2004), p. 7. Note that Robinson mistakenly gives the patent issue date as March 4. The correct date of March 14 may be verified by reference to the patent document; see also Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin, Edison, His Life and Inventions (Boston and London: Kessinger, 2004 [1910]) p. 370.
  32. ^ Quoted in Baldwin (2001), pp. 232, 233.
  33. ^ An enduring mystery concerns the length of the film. The entry in IMDb.com clearly misstates it as 1 minute. Baldwin (2001) says "thirty seconds" (p. 238). Musser (2004) says "fifteen seconds" (p. 16). The copy of the film made available by the Edison National Historic Site runs approximately 34 seconds, all shot from one camera position, without an apparent splice. As described later in the main text of the present article, at this point in the development of the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope, according to most accounts the supposed maximum length of any film made with the system was 50 feet, meaning a maximum running time of 20 seconds at the slowest speed used during this period according to latter-day published scholarship. On the other hand, Braun (1992) says that the early Kinetoscope movies could last 40 seconds because the film was configured as a loop (p. 191). The questions concerning the length of Blacksmith Scene have apparently never been directly addressed by any authorities in the field.
  34. ^ According to Robinson (1997), other factors included "Dickson's absence with a nervous breakdown [and] the alleged inebriety of the joiner...who had been contracted to make the [Kinetoscope] cabinets" (p. 40).
  35. ^ Robertson (2001), p. 6; Musser (1994), p. 81; Ena Bertoldi (Beatrice Mary Claxton) biographical essay by Barry Anthony/Luke McKernan, part of the Who's Who of Victorian Cinema website; Eugen Sandow (Frederick Muller) biographical essay by Richard Brown, part of the Who's Who of Victorian Cinema website. Both retrieved 10/24/06.
  36. ^ Musser (2002), p. 21.
  37. ^ Grieveson and Krämer (2004), p. 34; Cross and Walton (2005), p. 39.
  38. ^ Financial analysis based on Musser (1994), p. 81.
  39. ^ For the profits from April 1, 1894, through February 28, 1895, see Musser (1994), p. 84.
  40. ^ Musser (1994), p. 78; Burns (1998), p. 74. Multiple sources claiming either 40 fps or 46 fps as the standard may be adduced. According to Dickson's 1907 account, the rate was 46 fps—though at one point matters are further confused by what appears to be his erroneous sugggestion of a functional rate of 42 fps (part 3). The Library of Congress/Inventing Entertainment website makes accessible online video copies of many Kinetoscope films, including four shot with the 35 mm Kinetograph between January and March 1894. The library provides descriptions of the films, including running time and picture rate (all retrieved 10/29/06):

    Edison kinetoscopic record of a sneeze (aka Fred Ott's Sneeze): filmed ca. 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 ca. Mar. 10–16, 1894; 21 seconds at 30 fps

  41. ^ Ramsaye (1986) reports that Rector was central to the modification process (ch. 8), but no other source confirms this.
  42. ^ Ramsaye (1986), ch. 8–9; Musser (1994), pp. 82–84; Leonard-Cushing fight archival information and accessible film clip, part of the Library of Congress/Inventing Entertainment educational website. Retrieved 10/27/06.
  43. ^ Musser (2004), p. 22.
  44. ^ Karcher (1998), pp. 39, 82, 92–93.
  45. ^ Robinson (1996), p. 349.
  46. ^ Quoted in Robinson (1997), p. 47
  47. ^ Musser (1994), p. 78; Jenness (1894), p. 47.
  48. ^ Schwartz (1999), p. 183. Burns (1998) says the exhibition took place in August (p. 73); Grieveson and Krämer (2004) say it was September (p. 12).
  49. ^ Musser (1994), p. 82.
  50. ^ Griffith and Reed (1971), p. 900.
  51. ^ Rausch (2004), p. 8.
  52. ^ For the cost of the Kinetoscope's development: Millard (1990), p. 148; Spehr (2000), p. 7. For discussion of Edison's decision not to pursue European patents, see, e.g., Braun (1992), pp. 190–191.
  53. ^ Rossell (1998), pp. 91–94.
  54. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 51; Musser (1994), p. 87.
  55. ^ Edison: The Marriage of Sight and Sound part of the Library of Congress/Inventing Entertainment educational website. Retrieved 10/22/06.
  56. ^ Robinson (1997), p. 51; Gomery (1985), p. 54; "The Movies Are Born a Child of the Phonograph" by Mark Ulano, C.A.S., part of the FilmSound.org website. Retrieved 10/22/06. See also Millard (1990), p. 169.
  57. ^ Altman (2004), pp. 81–83.
  58. ^ Guida practica (1895–96), p. 126 [p. 348 in Light and Movement].
  59. ^ Quoted in Ramsaye (1986), ch. 9.
  60. ^ Ramsaye (1986), ch. 9.
  61. ^ Musser (1994), p. 84.
  62. ^ Ramsaye (1986), ch. 9–10; Musser (1994), pp. 92–93. There are old claims that one Jean Acmé LeRoy projected films in New York to an invited audience in February 1894 and to paying customers in New Jersey in February 1895 (at least one website has picked up on the latter). See Gosser (1977) for a discussion of the dubious nature of these claims (pp. 228–229).
  63. ^ Musser (2002), pp. 13–14.
  64. ^ See, e.g., Gunning (1994), pp. 61–65, 143–144; Musser (1994), pp. 239, 240, 254, 272, 290, 292, etc.
  65. ^ Musser (1994), p. 178; Altman (2004), pp. 89–90.
  66. ^ Millard (1990), p. 226. Rausch (2004) claims a specific invention was vital in this process: "In 1908, Edison returned with a device known as the Cinemaphone. This device adjusted the speed of a motion picture to match that of a Phonograph. This led to the Kinetophone...." (p. 78). Neither any of the standard biographies of Edison nor any of the leading histories of early sound film mention this "Cinemaphone."
  67. ^ Altman (2004), pp. 175–178; Gomery (1985), pp. 54–55.

Sources

  • Altman, Rick (2004). Silent Film Sound. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-11662-4
  • Baldwin, Neil (2001 [1995]). Edison: Inventing the Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-03571-9
  • Braun, Marta (1992). Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830–1904). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-07173-1
  • Burns, Richard W. (1998). Television: An International History of the Formative Years. London: Institution of Electrical Engineers. ISBN 0-85296-914-7
  • Cross, Gary S., and John K. Walton (2005). The Playful Crowd: Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12724-3
  • Dickson W.K.L. (1907). "Edison's Kinematograph Experiments," in A History of Early Film, vol. 1 (2000), ed. Stephen Herbert. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-21152-2
  • Edison, Thomas A. (1891a). "Kinetographic Camera" (U.S. patent application witnessed and signed July 31, 1891; filed August 24, 1891), in Light and Movement, ed. Mannoni et al.
  • Edison, Thomas A. (1891b). "Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects" (U.S. patent application witnessed and signed July 31, 1891; filed August 24, 1891), in Light and Movement, ed. Mannoni et al.
  • Gomery, Douglas (1985). "The Coming of Sound: Technological Change in the American Film Industry," in Technology and Culture—The Film Reader (2005), ed. Andrew Utterson, pp. 53–67. Oxford and New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-31984-6
  • Gosser, H. Mark (1977). Selected Attempts at Stereoscopic Moving Pictures and Their Relationship to the Development of Motion Picture Technology, 1852–1903. New York: Arno Press. ISBN 0-405-09890-1
  • Grieveson, Lee, and Peter Krämer, eds. (2004). The Silent Cinema Reader. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-25283-0
  • Griffith, Richard, and Stanley William Reed (1971). "Motion Pictures," in Encyclopædia Brittanica, 15th ed, vol. 15, pp. 898–918. Chicago et al.: Encyclopædia Brittanica. ISBN 0-85229-151-5
  • Guida practica per l'uso...del kinetoscopio Edison (n.a.; 1895–96). Milan: Edita dall' "Elettricità." Selected pages in Light and Movement, ed. Mannoni et al.
  • Gunning, Tom (1994 [1991]). D. W. Griffith and the Origins of American Narrative Film: The Early Years at Biograph. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-06366-X
  • Jenness, Charles Kelley (1894). The Charities of San Francisco: A Directory of the Benevolent and Correctional Agencies. San Francisco: Book Room Print/Stanford University.
  • Karcher, Alan J. (1998). New Jersey's Multiple Municipal Madness. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 0-8135-2565-9
  • Mannoni, Laurent, Donata Pesenti Campagnoni, and David Robinson (1996). Light and Movement: Incunabula of the Motion Picture, 1420–1896/Luce e movimento: Incunaboli dell'immagine animata, 1420–1896. London: BFI Publishing/Le Giornate Del CInema Muto, Cinémathèque française–Musée du Cinéma, Museo Nazionale del Cinema. ISBN 8-8861-5505-0
  • Millard, Andre (1990). Edison and the Business of Innovation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-3306-X
  • Münsterberg, Hugo (2004 [1916]). The Film: A Psychological Study. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover. ISBN 0-486-43386-2
  • Musser, Charles (1994 [1990]). The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-08533-7
  • Musser, Charles (2002). "Introducing Cinema to the American Public: The Vitascope in the United States, 1896–7," in Moviegoing in America: A Sourcebook in the History of Film Exhibition, ed. Gregory Waller, pp. 13–26. Maiden, Mass., and Oxford: Blackwell (available online). ISBN 0-631-22591-9
  • Musser, Charles (2004). "At the Beginning: Motion Picture Production, Representation and Ideology at the Edison and Lumière Companies," in Grieveson and Krämer, op. cit., pp. 15–28.
  • Ramsaye, Terry (1986 [1926]). A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture Through 1925. New York: Touchstone (chapters 8–10 available online; part of the Adventures in CyberSound website). ISBN 0-671-62404-0
  • Rausch, Andrew J. (2004). Turning Points in Film History. New York: Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-2592-4
  • Robertson, Patrick (2001). Film Facts. New York: Billboard Books. ISBN 0-8230-7943-0
  • Robinson, David (1996). "[Carmencita description]," in Light and Movement, ed. Mannoni et al.
  • Robinson, David (1997). From Peepshow to Palace: The Birth of American Film. New York and Chichester, West Sussex: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-10338-7
  • Rossell, Deac (1998). Living Pictures: The Origins of the Movies. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-3767-1
  • Salt, Barry (1992). Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. London: Starword. ISBN 0-9509066-0-3
  • Schwartz, Vanessa R. (1999 [1998]). Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-siècle Paris. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22168-0
  • Spehr, Paul C. (2000). "Unaltered to Date: Developing 35mm Film," in Moving Images: From Edison to the Webcam, ed. John Fullerton and Astrid Söderbergh Widding, pp. 3–28. Sydney: John Libbey & Co. ISBN 1-86462-054-4
  • Van Dulken, Stephen (2004). American Inventions: A History of Curious, Extraordiary, and Just Plain Useful Patents. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-8813-0

External links

Kinetoscope films

  • Edison National Historic Site: Blacksmith Scene (1893), Sandow (1894), Butterfly Dance (aka Serpentine Dance; ca. 1895), Edison at Work in His Chemistry Lab (n.d.); note that The Kiss (1896) was shot not for the Kinetoscope but for Vitascope projection
  • Library of Congress: twenty-five films from 1891 through 1895
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