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Making movies in the late 1800s at Edison's Black Maria studio. This is a picture of American
inventor Thomas Alva Edison. He lived between 1847 and 1931. During his lifetime he and
his colleagues were instrumental in many inventions including the lightbulb the photograph and
the motion picture camera. Well we're going to take a look at early moviemaking at the
very beginning of its history at Edison labs. In this note written by Thomas Alva Edison
he explains how in 1887 the idea occurred to him that it was possible to create a device
that would do for the eye what a phonograph does for the ear. This combination of motion
and sound that could be recorded and reproduced simultaneously. Edison put his assistant William
Kennedy Laurie Dickson in charge of the motion picture project beginning in 1888. The first
motion picture camera called the Kinetograph was created by Dixon and his colleagues. It
was a machine that exposed a strip of film in a horizontal feed mechanism. Here we see
a working Kinetograph. The Kinetoscope was invented to serve as a motion picture viewing
device. Essentially it was a wooden cabinet with about 50 feet of motion picture film
arranged around a series of spools inside and the film rotated around beneath a magnifying
lens so that when the person looked in the top of the machine they could watch the short
film play before their eyes. In late 1892 a new movie studio was created at Edison's
facility in West Orange New Jersey. It was called the Black Maria because it resembled
a police patrol wagon. It wasn't a particularly beautiful building but it served a purpose.
The roof would open up to allow in sunlight and the entire building could be rotated.
Many of the earliest films were recorded inside the Black Maria. Here's a selection of some
of the earliest films that were recorded in the Black Maria studio. Hundreds of Edison
films were recorded between 1891 in 1918 when Edison's company ceased film production. Many
of these films can be found online at sites such as the Library of Congress and the Internet
Archive. I hope you enjoyed this short introduction to early moviemaking in the late 1800s at
the Black Maria studio. There is much much more information on this topic. Do a Google
search and you'll find plenty to inform you further. That's it. Goodbye for now and have
a wonderful day.