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78 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT
a coin into the tall box, applied your eye to the little black chute, and a picture which seemed about half as big as an average book page performed for nearly a minute. The subjects appealed not so much to the emotions of the beholder as to his sense of wonder at the marvels of science. Two girls — one of them afterward famous as Ruth St. Denis — did a life-like skirt dance. A pranksome boy shook pepper before a man at a desk; he sneezed in a life-like manner. By the end of that year, the original Edison Kinetoscope Parlours had opened: the first on Broadway, the second in Masonic Temple, Chicago, the third — Baccigalupi’s — on Market Street, San Francisco.
Events began to move more swiftly. Two adventurous brothers named Latham saw the kinetoscope on Broadway; and, being sporting characters, conceived the idea of a moving-picture prize fight. They matched Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing, second-raters. It took. Thereupon they arranged the “great Corbett-Courtney fight,” between the champion of the world and an obscure sparring partner. This went six one-minute rounds to a real knockout. As the kinetoscope showed it, the spectator dropped another nickel at the end of each round.
Going on, the Lathams conceived the idea of moving pictures on a screen instead of in a peep-hole; with the help of their father. Mayor Woodville Latham, they devised a crude projector to produce that result. And in April, 1895, they showed their pictures to the press of