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February 1893: Edison Forges Ahead
In 1893, Thomas Edison's – or, perhaps more accurately, W.K.L. Dickson’s – five years of labour finally bore fruit with the completion of construction of the world’s first movie studio, The Black Maria, at Edison’s West Orange laboratory. Construction began on the studio in December 1892, so that Dickson would be in a position to complete some sample motion pictures in time for the Kinetoscope’s commercial unveiling at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Approximately fifty feet long and thirteen feet wide, the studio was built at a cost of $637.67. Named the Kinetographic Theater by Edison, it was quickly renamed the Black Maria by staff who thought the walls lined with black tar paper gave it an appearance similar to that of the black police “paddy” wagons of the time. The studio consisted of little more than a 12ft square stage and a stationary kinetograph camera (reputedly nicknamed ‘the Doghouse’ by Edison); it rotated on a graphite centre and tracks, and had a hinged roof so that optimum use could be made of natural sunlight. Construction of the studio was completed in February 1893.
On the fourteenth of the following month, Edison was granted the patent (No. 493,426) for an “apparatus for exhibiting photographs of moving objects”: the kinetoscope.
One of the first movies filmed in the studio was Blacksmith Scene. The date on which the film was shot is unclear, although Dickson, who was involved in the shoot, was away from the studio suffering from nervous exhaustion between February and April, so it is likely that filming took place sometime in late April. Blacksmith Scene did exactly what it said on the tin: depicted a scene from a mock blacksmith’s workshop that had been built in the studio. Edison employees Charles Kayser and John Ott, and one other unidentified man, played the part of the smithy and his assistants. The movie was directed by Dickson and filmed by his assistant, William Heise.
Blacksmith Scene enjoyed its first public demonstration at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on 9th May 1893, at a monthly meeting of the Institute’s Department of Physics., during a lecture conducted by George M. Hopkins, the department president, to demonstrate Edison’s kinetograph and kinetoscope, Following projections of a dancing skeleton from a choreutoscope, and images from a similar machine to Edweard Muybridge’s zoopraxiscope, individual frames from Blacksmith Scene were projected onto the same screen to demonstrate the superior image. At the end of Hopkins’ lecture, the entire audience patiently queued to view the motion picture through the peephole of a kinetoscope. As the audience consisted of more than 400 people, and the film lasted a total of thirty seconds, it took more than three hours for everyone to view the film.
In reporting the lecture, The Scientific American earned itself a place in movie history on 20th May 1893 by revealing the first ever movie spoiler:
“The picture represented a blacksmith and two helpers forging a piece of iron. Before beginning the job a bottle was passed from one to the other, each imbibing his portion. The blacksmith then removed his white hot iron from the forge with a pair of tongs and gave directions to his helpers with the small hand hammer, when they immediately began to pound the hot iron while the sparks flew in all directions, the blacksmith at the same time making intermediate strokes with his hand hammer. At a signal from the smith, the helpers put down their sledge hammers, when the iron was returned to the forge and another piece substituted for it, and the operation was repeated.”
A contract for the manufacture of 25 kinetoscopes was drawn up in late June 1893, although completion of manufacture was delayed until March the following year, meaning they were not ready for the Chicago Exposition as originally intended.
On 6th October 1893, W. K. L. Dickson deposited the first films made in the Black Maria, ‘Edison Kinetoscopic Records,' with the Library of Congress for copyright purposes. [ADD]
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