In the late 1880s, famed American inventor Thomas Edison and assistant William Dickson borrowed from the earlier work of Muybridge, Marey, Le Prince and Eastman. Their goal was to construct a device for recording movement on film, and another device for viewing the film.
Although Edison is often credited with the development of early motion picture cameras and projectors, it was Dickson, in November 1890, who devised a crude, motor-powered camera that could photograph motion pictures - called a Kinetograph. The motor-driven camera was designed to capture movement with a synchronized shutter and sprocket system (Dickson's unique invention) that could move the film through the camera by an electric motor.
The Kinetograph used film which was 35mm wide and had sprocket holes to advance the film. The sprocket system would momentarily pause the film roll before the camera's shutter to create a photographic frame (a still or photographic image). The formal introduction of the Kinetograph in October of 1892 set the standard for theatrical motion picture cameras still used today. However, moveable hand-cranked cameras soon became more popular, because the motor-driven cameras were heavy and bulky
In 1891, Dickson also designed an early version of a movie-picture projector based on the Zoetrope - called the Kinetoscope.
On Saturday, April 14, 1894, a refined version of Edison's Kinetoscope began commercial operation. The floor-standing, box-like viewing device was basically a bulky, coin-operated, movie "peep show" cabinet for a single customer (in which the images on a continuous film loop-belt were viewed in motion as they were rotated in front of a shutter and an electric lamp-light). The Kinetoscope, the forerunner of the motion picture film projector (without sound), was finally patented on August 31, 1897 (Edison applied for the patent in 1891). The viewing device quickly became popular in carnivals, Kinetoscope parlors, amusement arcades, and sideshows for a number of years.
The world's first film production studio - or "America's first movie studio," the Black Maria, was built on the grounds of Edison's laboratories at West Orange, New Jersey, on February 1, 1893, at a cost of $637.67. It was constructed for the purpose of making film strips for the Kinetoscope. It was a black, tar-paper covered building/studio (with a retractable or hinged, flip-up roof to allow sunlight in), and built with a turntable to orient itself throughout the day to follow the natural sunlight.
In early January 1894, The Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (aka Fred Ott's Sneeze) was one of the first series of short films made by Dickson for the Kinetoscope viewer in Edison's Black Maria studio with fellow assistant Fred Ott. It was the earliest surviving, copyrighted motion picture - composed of an optical record (and medium close-up) of Fred Ott, an Edison employee, sneezing comically for the camera.
The first films were extemely simple in form and style. They usually consisted of a single shot framing an action, usually at a long-shot distance. The first motion pictures made in the Black Maria consisted of vaudeville entertainers, famous sports figures and celebrities who performed for the camera.
In the early 1890s, Edison and Dickson also devised a prototype sound-film system called the Kinetophonograph or Kinetophone - a precursor of the 1891 Kinetoscope with a cylinder-playing phonograph to provide the unsynchronized sound. The projector was connected to the phonograph with a pulley system, but it didn't work very well and was difficult to synchronize. The first known (and only surviving) film with live-recorded sound made to test the Kinetophone was the 17-second Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894-1895).
Since Edison believed that movies were a passing fad he didn't develop a method to project films onto a screen. This was left to the Lumiere Brothers. Independantly to Edison and Dickson, the Lumiere brothers developed their own camera. - a more portable, hand-held and lightweight device that could be cranked by hand and could project movie images to several spectators. It was dubbed the Cinematographe and patented in February, 1895. They used a film width of 35mm, and a speed of 16 frames per second - an industry norm until the talkies. By the advent of sound film in the late 1920s, 24 fps became the standard. It was on December 28th, 1895 that the Lumiere brothers held one of the first public showings of motion pictures projected on a screen at the Grande Cafe in Paris France. As generally acknowledged, cinema (a word derived from Cinematographe) was born on that day in Paris France.
Until 1903 most films showed scenic places or noteworth events, but narrative form also entered the cinema from the beginning. Both Edison and the Lumieres brothers "staged" events to make films.
By the late 1800 and early 1900 there were now film companies that were vieing for control of the film industry. These companies were mainly established on the East Coast.
Edison Manufacturing Company - began producing films for the Kinetoscope in 1891, with headquarters and production facilities in West Orange, NJ; formally became a company in 1894. Afterwards, Edison intensely fought for control of 'his' movie industry by harrassing, sue-ing, or buying patents from anyone he thought was threatening his company.
Selig Polyscope Company, was founded in 1896, in Chicago, Illinois by "Colonel" William Selig. Initially, the company specialized in slapstick comedies, "jungle" films, historical subjects, serials, travel films, and the early westerns starring Tom Mix.
American Vitagraph Company, formed by British-born Americans J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith in 1896. The company's first fictional film was The Burglar on the Roof, filmed and released in 1897. It soon became the largest film company, turning out 200 films a year.
MutoscopeAmerican Mutoscope Company, founded in 1895 in New York City, NY by disenchanted Edison worker William K. L. Dickson, Herman Casler, Henry Marvin and pocket lighter inventor Elias Koopman. Their first motion picture machine was the Mutoscope - a peephole, flip-card device similar in size to a Kinetoscope. Instead of using film, a spinning set of photographs mounted on a drum inside the cabinet gave the impression of motion. This was followed by a projector - the Biograph Projector, that was first demonstrated in New York City in 1896. It was the first time projected images from an American film company were shownto an American movie theatre audience. They also devised a camera called the Mutograph (originally called the Biograph) that didn't use sprocket holes or perforations in the motion-picture film. The company released its first film in 1896, titled Empire State Express.
Soon, the American Mutoscope Company became the most popular film company in America. They were formally renamed the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1899.
From about 1904 on, narrative form became the most prominent type of film making in the commerical industry and the world wide popularity of cinema continued to grow.
