On Sunday, June 19, 2005, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette featured an excellent article on the history of the Nickelodeon Theatre written by Timothy McNulty.

 Interior Nickelodeon Theatre, Pittsburgh

"There were other stand-alone theaters in New Orleans and Los Angeles before the Nickelodeon opened, says Michael Aronson, an assistant professor of film and media studies at the University of Oregon, who is writing a history of the Pittsburgh nickelodeon boom. And other theaters had carried the name "nickelodeon," for a combination of their admission price and the Greek word for "theater." 

Also, the films often cited through the years as opening at the Pittsburgh Nickelodeon in 1905 -- a comedy called 'The Baffled Burglar' and the melodrama 'Poor but Honest' -- were also likely incorrect. According to records kept by the American Film Institute, those films were not produced until several years later. 

Other historical references say the first movie shown was 'The Great Train Robbery,' but that legendary 1903 film was already so well-known (it previously had a summer-long run at Kennywood, for instance) that patrons probably would not be flooding into the Nickelodeon to see it again two years later. 

But the importance of the theater, whatever the details, is not in question, says Aronson, who earned his doctorate from Pitt in 2003. It was still the template for all the theaters -- and the new movie industry itself -- that followed it. 

'It's like saying Starbucks didn't invent coffee in a cup, so they didn't have an impact on our culture,' Aronson said. 

'It was the effect that mattered. In the Pittsburgh Nickelodeon, clearly everything came together at the right time, and everything took off.'"