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enter the manufacturing side of the industry on a large scale.
In the meantime, Messrs. Blackton and Smith, who had been lyceum entertainers from 1894 to 1896, were interested in moving pictures in a small way. Both were experienced along lines which enabled the two to grasp the opportunity that they felt was clearly at hand. Albert A. Smith, like J. Stuart Blackton, was something of an artist, much interested in photography, electricity and mechanics, and as several projecting machines, mostly inferior, were already on the market. Smith was emboldened to build a machine that would project pictures on the sheet. This, he confesses, was crude ; so to hasten his plan, Smith acquired several of the projecting machines already on the market, and adapting to them a device which he had invented to reset the picture when the film had "jumped" (one of the early troubles of the exhibitors of that day), and demonstrating the success of the improvement, early in 1897, Messrs. Smith and Blackton started the Vitagraph Company in a Nassau street office building.
Rock v/as exhibiting his Vitascope long after the Vitagraph Company was launched. In 1899 he came to New York and started a competition which threatened the future of the Vitagraph ; the latter had in 1899 become almost a monopoly, and Rock's breaking in with his Vitascope was looked upon by Blackton and Smith as a serious menace to the structure the latter had reared.
One night, at the corner of 125th street and Third avenue, the three pioneers m.et, and as a result of this impromptu meeting, the triumvirate which to-day stands at the top of moving picturedom was formed.