The history of movie-making is a fascinating topic. Thomas Edison was very key in the starting and founding of the movie-making industry. He began his endeavors by inventing the first video camera which he called the “kinetoscope”. And with the kinetoscope he started filming, which led the the building of the first movie studio in the United States. He chose to build it near his laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey. He started to build the “Black Maria”, or what came to be known also as the “Kinetographic Theater”, in December of 1892. It cost him a whopping 637.67. He started filming there and inviting circus and vaudeville actors to perform in front of his kinetoscope. Edison started to distribute these films at theaters and fairgrounds. Eventually, word got around about his new invention, and Edison was invited to the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences to show-case the amazing kinetoscope. He showed a film he had made of three people pretending to be blacksmiths. Now we don’t know the story-line or moral of Edison’s blacksmith story, or if there even was one. But we do know that Edison helped shape an industry that would take the world by storm.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 11th, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.