Film year book : 1922-23 (1923)

"That' is — we've got it — now work like hell." And so it was that film came into the motion picture industry. This was early in 1889, perhaps a year after Edison's beginning on the problem. With that material in hand, Edison knew that the solution of the picture puzzle was but a matter of details. There were tremendous difi[iculties_ ahead, but now the basic quest for material had ended. * * * Among those early day itinerant phonograph entertainers was Lyman Howe of Wilkesbarre, Pa. On a circuit through the smaller towns of his territory Howe gave phonograph entertainments in connection with Ladies' Aid Societies and church boards, dividing the profits with the churches. He was pioneering for a motion picture business of renown, but he little suspected it then. At about the same time over in Paris an enterprising Frenchman heard about the wonderful Edison phonograph that had come to London. He was busy, but he had a young friend, one Charles Pathe, who had little to do. He pressed a bundle of francs in Pathe's hand and told him to go to London and get one of those talking machines. * * * But more important still to Pathe, he established a contact with the genius of Edison and the greater thing to come. * * * Meanwhile Edison came to the opinion that after all secrecy could hardly protect his invention much longer, and so August 24, 1891, he made application for a United States patent. How $150 Not Spent Cost Millions At this time it was suggested to Edison, as a matter of routine, at least, that perhaps application should also be made for foreign patents, including France and England. "How much will that cost?" Edison asked casually. "Oh, about $150." Edison waived the suggestion aside. "It isn't worth it." But if Edison, on that day in August of 1891, had said "Yes," he would have put himself in a position to get many, many millions of dollars in the foreign field. Also he might have withheld from a number of European opportunists a temptation to what may have been a lawful but an unmoral piracy. * * * The application for the patent for the kinetoscope was filed, the article goes on to say. In December of 1892, the photographic work in connection with this young kinetoscope demanded a building for itself — the first motion picture studio in the world. So work was started on a curious structure, the like of which had never been seen before. It was a little house of light timbers and black light-proof tar paper, built on a turn table. The speed of photographic materials and camera lenses was much lower then than now and the snapshots for the kinetoscope had to be made in full light. There were thirty to forty pictures a second then. Therefore, the building was pivoted so that the tiny stage could always be turned to catch the sun, regardless of the hour of day. This little studio has survived in history as "The Black Maria." The "Black Maria," then known officially as the "revolving photographic building," on the Edison account books, was completed February 1, 1893, at a total cost of $637.67. The making of motion pictures for ultimate public presentation was begun in that building. All picture making before that had been but the simplest of laboratory work for the testing of the machines. Early in 1893, the kinetoscope was shown to a scientific gathering at the Brooklyn Institute, and not long thereafter it was presented to the public for the first time as an exhibit at the Columbian Exposition, greatest of the world's fairs, held at Chicago. With this exhibition, trivial as it seemed then, the greater events of the history of the motion picture had their beginning. There were a number of devices at the World's Fair that indicated how close the motion picture was then crowding its way forward into a part in the world's affairs. Among them was Muybridge's "Zoopraxoscope" and a machine rather closely related to it, called the "Tachyscope." (Ramsaye tells of how J. Hunter Armat, his brother, Tom, Grey Latham, all names of importance in the early days of the development, after seeing the machine at the World's Fair, became interested in the idea.) By this time the Edison machine was rather automatically forcing its own career. A firm of promoters and exploiters. Raff and Gammon, headed by Norman C. Raff, became the Edison agents for the kinetoscope with a plan for putting it before the public through the sale of the territorial or state rights on the exhibition of the machine. The year 1894 had arrived. Through the instrumentality of Raff and Gammon, the kinetoscope slot rnachines were to cover the world with arcade peep shows and swiftly open the way for the coming of the real motion picture— the picture projected on a screen. By April 1, 1894, twenty-five kinetoscopes had been manufactured at a total cost of $1,227.48, and on April 6, ten of them were shipped across the Hudson to Holland Brothers, at 1155 Broadway, in 13