In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1914)

Record Details:

Title:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants
Date:
1914
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants : record volume 6
Leaf #:
000232
Language:
English
Collection:
Government & Law and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
September 21, 2023
Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

could not be used for the purpose of printing facsimile positive copies for use on projecting machines. Q. Will you please now describe the essential characteristics of the projecting machines that were in commercial use or on the market at the date before mentioned, for projecting pictures of motion picture strips such as you have described. A. All such projecting machines embodied the following common characteristics. They were all adapted to use a single flexible transparent or translucent tape-like film such as I have already described. They embodied upper and lower supports for the bulk of the film. They embodied two feeding mechanisms, one consisting of a pair of continuously rotating sprocket feed wheels positively engaging the film, and having an intermediate section of slack film between them. The other feeding device, consisting of a feeding device that positively engaged the slack portion of the film and fed it with an intermittent motion at a high rate of speed across a fixed illuminated exposure window in such a manner that the intervals of pause and illumination exceeded the intervals of movement. These machines possessed a single stationary lens, and a shutter adapted to intercept the light during the period of movement of the film, and one or more times during the period of rest. These machines also possessed a movable frame carrying the intermittent feeding device and the slack portion of the film, the frame, the feeding device and the film being capable of adjustment with reference to the fixed exposure aperture. Q. Was there upon those projecting machines, any framing device? A. Well, in describing a movable frame having thereon the intermittent movement and the slack portion of the film, which framing device was adjustable with reference to the fixed exposure aperture, I meant to describe a framing device. Perhaps my language would have been more descriptive if I had said that this frame possessed means of varying the relative positions of the feeding device and the slack portion of the film with reference to the fixed exposure aperture, that arrangement constituting a framing device, so-called. Q. State whether or not there have been any projecting machines in commercial use in this country from the beginning of 1908 down to the present time, that did not