5 ms·

The first motion picture production studio: Edison’s Black Maria

21 points by brudgers 4y ago

santiagobasulto 4y ago
A couple of days ago I visited "Museo del Cinema" (Film's museum) in Turin, Italy. I was very impressed with the amount of inventions that were conceived before the first film camera. Sometimes we think things are "discrete", like: the film camera is invented. But in reality, it's a spectrum of a lot of small advancements and inventions that result in the one big milestone.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
  Yes, things like the zoopraxiscope by Muybridge (His motion studies are incredible), and other phenakistiscopes, long predate the traditional motion picture camera and are evidence of incredible inventiveness and a human search for motion by way of optical illusion. Then you get people like Melies who just exploded what you could do with the camera and, in a certain fashion, invented a lot of the special effect techniques we know today through sheer playfulness and experimentation.
  - santiagobasulto 4y ago
    Yes! I saw both those things (zoopraxiscope and phenakistiscopes) at the museum and I was very amazed by them. I agree 100%. Humans have been looking for ways to tell animated stories (or tell stories with motion) for centuries. Movies are just the result of many years of improvements and our "stubbornness".
trhway 4y ago
From the linked further article on Kinetoscope, so much here - inventor's dilemma as well as "for maybe about ten of them" coming from a person who builds the future and clearly and correctly foresees at least a half of it yet not the full future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope "Even as Edison followed his dream of securing the Kinetoscope's popularity by adding sound to its allure, many in the field were beginning to suspect that film projection was the next step that should be pursued. When Norman Raff communicated his customers' interest in such a system to Edison, the great inventor summarily rejected the notion: No, if we make this screen machine that you are asking for, it will spoil everything. We are making these peep show machines and selling a lot of them at a good profit. If we put out a screen machine there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines you could show the pictures to everybody in the country—and then it would be done. Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.[82]"
- acadapter 4y ago
  An example of Kodak mentality before Kodak even existed.
- tinsmith 4y ago
  There was a lot of revisionist history out there that painted Edison as this great inventor, when in fact, he was just a businessman who knew how to exploit for profit. I lived in the town where he grew up after his family moved from Ohio, and they still laud him here, with zero mention in any of the many museums of the individuals whose ideas he piggybacked, borrowed, and sometimes downright stole. It's almost fitting that Port Huron idolizes such an individual, since the town itself is swathed in a veneer of supposed boot-strap success stories, when, in fact, both politically and socially, it is remarkably backwards and ersatz. Edison sold candy to train passengers, and learned very early how to make a buck. He was a hack, otherwise, stumbling his way through other people's ideas while putting on a show of being some kind of marvel. That's it. That sums up the man's entire history.
  - jhbadger 4y ago
    He actually started out as a real inventor, but he ended up as someone like Steve Jobs -- the public face of a large corporation with thousands of people under him doing the real work.
car_analogy 4y ago
Fun fact: The movie industry was established in Hollywood to evade patent fees, thanks to the distance from the east coast, and the local court's aversion to enforcing patents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company

21 points by brudgers 4y ago

A couple of days ago I visited "Museo del Cinema" (Film's museum) in Turin, Italy. I was very impressed with the amount of inventions that were conceived before the first film camera. Sometimes we think things are "discrete", like: the film camera is invented. But in reality, it's a spectrum of a lot of small advancements and inventions that result in the one big milestone.

beezlebroxxxxxx 4y ago
Yes, things like the zoopraxiscope by Muybridge (His motion studies are incredible), and other phenakistiscopes, long predate the traditional motion picture camera and are evidence of incredible inventiveness and a human search for motion by way of optical illusion. Then you get people like Melies who just exploded what you could do with the camera and, in a certain fashion, invented a lot of the special effect techniques we know today through sheer playfulness and experimentation.
- santiagobasulto 4y ago
  Yes! I saw both those things (zoopraxiscope and phenakistiscopes) at the museum and I was very amazed by them. I agree 100%. Humans have been looking for ways to tell animated stories (or tell stories with motion) for centuries. Movies are just the result of many years of improvements and our "stubbornness".

trhway 4y ago

From the linked further article on Kinetoscope, so much here - inventor's dilemma as well as "for maybe about ten of them" coming from a person who builds the future and clearly and correctly foresees at least a half of it yet not the full future: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope "Even as Edison followed his dream of securing the Kinetoscope's popularity by adding sound to its allure, many in the field were beginning to suspect that film projection was the next step that should be pursued. When Norman Raff communicated his customers' interest in such a system to Edison, the great inventor summarily rejected the notion: No, if we make this screen machine that you are asking for, it will spoil everything. We are making these peep show machines and selling a lot of them at a good profit. If we put out a screen machine there will be a use for maybe about ten of them in the whole United States. With that many screen machines you could show the pictures to everybody in the country—and then it would be done. Let's not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.[82]"

acadapter 4y ago
An example of Kodak mentality before Kodak even existed.
tinsmith 4y ago
There was a lot of revisionist history out there that painted Edison as this great inventor, when in fact, he was just a businessman who knew how to exploit for profit. I lived in the town where he grew up after his family moved from Ohio, and they still laud him here, with zero mention in any of the many museums of the individuals whose ideas he piggybacked, borrowed, and sometimes downright stole. It's almost fitting that Port Huron idolizes such an individual, since the town itself is swathed in a veneer of supposed boot-strap success stories, when, in fact, both politically and socially, it is remarkably backwards and ersatz. Edison sold candy to train passengers, and learned very early how to make a buck. He was a hack, otherwise, stumbling his way through other people's ideas while putting on a show of being some kind of marvel. That's it. That sums up the man's entire history.
- jhbadger 4y ago
  He actually started out as a real inventor, but he ended up as someone like Steve Jobs -- the public face of a large corporation with thousands of people under him doing the real work.

car_analogy 4y ago

Fun fact: The movie industry was established in Hollywood to evade patent fees, thanks to the distance from the east coast, and the local court's aversion to enforcing patents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company