A D V E N T U R E S in C Y B E R S O U N DEdison's Kinetograph 1897
"My plan was to synchronize the camera and the phonograph so as to record sounds when the pictures were made, and reproduce the two in harmony... We had the first of the so-called "talking pictures" in our laboratory thirty years ago"Decades before Thomas Edison's work began on moving pictures, people were making crude hand drawn motion pictures, much like how animated cartoons are drawn. Eventually photographers began to experiment with taking a series of pictures of a subject in motion, and then showing them back in sequence. British photographer Eadweard Muybridge was a pioneer in this process. He had 700 cameras set up in sequence, to photograph a trotting horse. This major undertaking yielded just 60 seconds of motion picture when all the photographs were viewed back in sequence. In 1888 Thomas Edison met with Muybridge to discuss adding sound to his moving pictures. Edison wanted to record sound on his phonograph and then synchronize it with the moving picture. Muybridge wasn't much interested because be felt the phonograph wouldn't be loud enough for a large audience to hear. The meeting with Muybridge didn't discourage Edison, in fact it gave him an idea for developing his own motion picture machine. Edison installed a cylinder similiar to those used on his phonograph, inside a camera and coated it with a light sensitive material. Every time a picture was taken the cyliner turned slightly, taking another picture.
Edisons KInetograph, 1897
About this time George Eastman unveiled his new celluloid film which began to replace the system of using light sensitive plates and large bulky cameras. This led Eastman to manufacture the "Brownie" camera, making it possible for ordinary people to take photographs. In 1889 Thomas Edison ordered some of the new film cut into long strips. His associate William K. L. Dickson worked on a sprocket system for a camera that would cause the film to move past the lens when turned by a crank. One of the first films Edison made was of a laboratory worker in his Newark laboratory. Edison turned the crank on his kinetoscope and shot frames of Fred Ott acting out a sneeze. Edison even recorded the sound of a sneeze on his phonograph to be played back with "The Sneeze" film. In order to see the film Edison invented a viewer to go along with it. Soon he began churning out movies in a studio he had built at the West Orange laboratory. The Black Maria as he called it, was a large structure covered with tar paper. A hole in the ceiling allowed the sun to shine through and illuminated the stage. The entire building was on a set of tracks so that it could be moved around to follow the sun. Edison employed circus performers, dancers and animals in his films that lasted only a few seconds. His first movie with a plot was "The Great Train Robbery" and it lasted 15 minutes. The films were being shown all around the country in arcades and drugs stores. He churned out more than 2000 short films from the "Black Maria".
Source: http://www.naples.net/~arzone/invent.htm
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