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This Day in History

I've already touched on Edison in a previous post, but our movie owes a lot to his genius. Not only did he try to invent the machine upon which our film is based, but he was also the first to open a film studio in America.

Wired has it covered:

Feb. 1, 1893: Lights! Kinetograph! Action!

What is generally regarded as America's first film-production studio, Thomas Edison's "Black Maria," opens in West Orange, New Jersey.

Black Maria (pronounced "Mah-RYE-uh") was known more formally as the Kinetographic Theater -- after the Kinetograph, a forerunner of the movie camera. It was built on the grounds of Edison's laboratories. The Kinetoscope (a forerunner of the projector) had been developed there as well, by one of the inventor's underlings. Black Maria (nicknamed by assistants who likened its cramped quarters to the black marias, or paddy wagons, used by the police) was where Edison staged his first public demonstrations of films made for the Kinetoscope viewer. One of the earliest films made there was The Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, known more colloquially as Fred Ott's Sneeze. And that's exactly what it was: a short film of a guy called Fred Ott, sneezing for the camera. The studio consisted of a dark room covered in tar paper, with a retractable roof. It was completed for the then-princely sum of $637.67 ($13,800 in today's money). Once the word was out, Edison was besieged by a slew of actors, acrobats, pugilists and a variety of other performers hoping to be filmed for posterity. While the Kinetoscope's vogue was relatively short-lived, it was profitable: A commercial Kinetoscope theater opened in New York City in 1894, charging a quarter for admission (five bucks these days), and others soon followed in San Francisco, Chicago and Atlantic City.

It's a nice coincidence considering we just held the official kickoff party for our own film last night. 115 years after Edison made his first film, we're just beginning ours.

Many big thanks to those who came out - the night turned out to be very successful and ridiculously fun. I have so much love for those people who donated to the cause. Thank you for supporting us!