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17/10/1894: The British Exploit Edison's Blunder
Britain’s first Kinetoscope parlour opened its doors for business on the 17th October 1894. It was situated at 70 Oxford Street, London (now McDonald’s Electronics) and the previous evening an invited audience had enjoyed a private viewing before going on to the Horse Shoe Hotel in Tottenham Court Road for dinner. The parlour was owned by the New York based Continental Commerce Company, and was run by two Americans, Franck Zeveley Maguire and Joseph Baucus. Maguire, a diminutive red-headed Irishman, had been an agent for Edison’s Phonograph in the 1880s, covering Japan and China; Baucus was a Princeton educated lawyer who had practiced in Newark, New Jersey and Wall Street before becoming Maguire’s business partner. Edison had granted Maguire and Baucus the world rights, excluding USA and Canada, for exhibiting and marketing the Kinetoscope. It was a deal that looks lucrative until one remembers that Edison had failed to patent the Kinetoscope outside of the States. Unable to control the Kinetoscope market, the partner’s success was short-lived.
Among the films shown on the movie industry’s British birth-night were the scandalous Carmencita, Bar Room, Cock Fight, Wrestling Match, Barber Shop, Annabelle Butterfly Dance and that old favourite, Blacksmith Scene. Maguire and Baucus charged two pennies to watch the films, and their opening night was a roaring success.
Other parlours sprang up across the city within weeks, some of which were owned by a pair of Greek entrepreneurs named George Georgiades and George Tragides. In spring 1894, the partners had purchased six kinetoscopes from the Holland Brothers. Georgiades demonstrated one of the machines to Henri Flamans, the editor of the French illustrated journal Le Magasin Pittoresque, in July 1894, and together the Greeks formed the American Kinetoscope Company with offices at 95 Queen Street, London, and 20 Boulevard Montmartre, Paris. They opened a couple of parlours in Old Broad Street and the Strand in London and, wishing to expand their business but reluctant to pay the high price demanded by Edison for his machines, they asked Robert Paul to make copies of Edison’s Kinetoscope. Paul was a successful 25-year-old instrument maker and electrical engineer working out of 44 Hatton Garden, and a friend of Harry Short, an assistant to Birt Acres at Elliott’s Photographic Works, who introduced Paul to the Greek businessmen.
Paul was astonished to discover that Edison had failed to patent his kinetoscope outside of the United States, thus enabling him to make replicas of the machine without fear of litigation. He set to work immediately and, having carried out the work for the Greeks, he decided to make more of them for his own use.
However, Paul immediately hit a snag: at that time, Edison was the only manufacturer of films for the Kinetoscope, and, unlike the machine on which they were played, each film was copyrighted. And Edison would only supply them to exhibitors who leased his machines. Paul decided he would have to build a movie camera of his own, but lacked the necessary knowledge of photography. Once again, Paul’s friend Harry Short came to the rescue by introducing Paul to his boss at the Photographic Works. Paul and Birt Acres, a professional photographer who had already taken out photographic patents, were soon to forge a short-lived, but fruitful partnership. [ADD]
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