The Beginning
"Living subjects portrayed in a manner to excite wonderment" proclaimed the Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper. An anonymous reporter had just witnessed the first public showing of a commercial length 35mm motion picture.
This short film had not been shown in a theatre or even projected on a screen but viewed through peepholes in a wooden box called a kinetoscope.
The device had been the result of a three-year collaboration between Thomas Edison and lab assistant William Dickson; most film historians leaning towards Dickson as the principal inventor.
 Edison's Black Maria Studio | To meet the anticipated demand for kinetoscope subjects, Edison built the Black Maria film studio in West Orange, New Jersey. The tar-paper-covered building with retractable roof and a 12 foot square (barely) shooting stage was fully equipped by May 1893. |
The kinetoscope making its public debut at the monthly meeting of the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on the evening of May 9, 1893. After a lecture-demonstration, members stood in line to peer into the oak cabinet. It would take over three hours for everyone to see Blacksmith Scene, featuring three men hammering on an anvil while passing around a bottle of beer.
Edison hoped to have a battery of kinetoscopes on display at the Chicago Worlds Fair but failed to deliver. The motion picture industry finally getting underway on April 1894 with a shipment of ten machines to 1155 Broadway in New York City.
The Holland Brothers Kinetoscope Parlor became a Broadway sensation, attracting long lines of patrons eager to see the living pictures. Other parlors were soon thriving in the major cities of the United States and Europe. |  Kinetoscope Parlor |
When other pioneers begun gathering attention for their projected images, Edison acquired the rights to Thomas Armat's phantoscope. Renamed the vitascope, it scored a tremendous success at Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New York City.
