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First Movie
1890Thomas Edison's assistant, W.K.L. Dickson, begins devoting himself to the "motion picture project". He and his staff develop a horizontal-feed motion picture camera. -
Period: to
Film
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Film
1892Edison’s use of 1 1 / 2 - inch film in his vertical-feed motion picture camera establishes the basis for today's standard 35mm commercial film gauge. -
Film Studio
1893Edison builds a film studio on the grounds of his laboratories in New Jersey to produce films for his kinetoscope machines. The studio is called "The Black Maria", a slang term for a police patrol wagon -
Film Industries Boom
1990The actualities (scenes of daily life), the news events (both real and reconstructed), and the worn-out dramatic and comic situations that have become the standard fare of film exhibitions, begin to bore audiences. Attendance at the showing of motion pictures begins to fall.
Due to the cheaper competition from exhibition services using the "standard" 35mm film format, Biograph finds it harder to convince vaudeville theatres to use its projectors that require films using its wider 70mm film g -
Film
1991The French film company, Pathè Frères, hires Ferdinand Zecca to be its head of film production. Within a year the number of Pathè releases surpasses the output of the popular French producer, Georges Méliès.
An organization of vaudeville performers, the "White Rats of America", go on strike forcing many more vaudeville theatres to show motion pictures to fill their bills.
Thomas Edison wins his patent-infringement suit against the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Biograph immediately
