|
Search By:
|
|
Oct 1889 - "Good Morning, Mr. Edison."
In June 1889, Thomas Edison asked his talented assistant, WKL Dickson, to work on building a device capable of recording moving pictures, a project he had been considering since his meeting with Edweard Muybridge in February of the previous year.
Dickson originally tried to coat phonograph-style cylinders with a sensitised emulsion, but was unsuccessful. Only when he tried using sheets of celluloid photographic film purchased from John Carbutt did he begin to make progress. Dickson also purchased a Kodak camera from the Eastman Company for the film inside the camera and, as his experiments progressed, would continue to buy Eastman’s newly invented celluloid.
Dickson wrapped cut sheets of Carbutt’s film around the cylinder, which he illuminated by means of a stroboscopic flash fired by pins at the end of the cylinder aligned with each picture. The principle was similar to that created by Ottomar Anschutz for his Tachyscope in 1887.
Edison filed a caveat for this device in August 1889, shortly before leaving for the Universal Exhibition in Paris, and a meeting with Etienne-Jules Marey. During his meeting with Marey, the Frenchman demonstrated his chronophotographe which had by then been modified to use celluloid film. Inspired by Marey’s contraption, Edison filed a further caveat (Edison was a big caveat-filer) which specified the intermittent movement of a strip of film by means of a toothed sprocket wheel that engaged perforations on each side of the film. These perforations ensured the film travelled the same distance with each movement, thus ensuring a steady picture. Edison also envisaged a viewer to show the film that would illuminate the film by means of a light flashing through a rotating shutter.
For many years film historians had believed that following Edison’s return from Paris in October 1889, Dickson greeted him with a screening of the first ever motion picture with synchronised sound. In his 1895 book (written with his sister, Antonia shortly before his bust-up with Edison) Dickson claims:
"The crowning point of realism was attained on the occasion of Mr. Edison's return from the Paris Exposition of 1889, when Mr. Dickson himself stepped out on the screen, raised his hat and smiled, while uttering the words of greeting, Good morning Mr. Edison, glad to see you back. I hope you are satisfied with the Kineto-phonograph."
Dickson’s claim is now believed by some to be a… mistaken one. Both Edison and Dickson were given to falsifying the dates and timelines of their inventions. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, lawsuits buzzed about like gnats over a pond, many of them for patent infringement. It’s possible that Edison and Dickson claimed inventions were made earlier than they actually were in order to protect – or obtain – the patent for that invention.
The story goes that the sound was achieved by simply hooking up a phonograph to the “Kinetophonograph” on which the recording was filmed, and that Edison was unimpressed with the result. Believing the sound quality was too crude to be commercially exploited, Edison was alleged to have given up the project.
It’s unlikely that even a whizz-bang inventor like Dickson could have come up with such a device in a matter of four months. Even less likely, given Edison’s fondness for filing patents (a total of 1,093 would be issued to him during his career) is the notion that Edison would wait nearly two years before applying for a patent for the Kinetograph (he would not apply for a patent until 24th August 1891) [ADD].
Further Reading:
© 2009-2010 moviemoviesite.com