History of the Movies Hardcover - 1983

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Previews of Coming Attractions: It emerged from Thomas A Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey, laboratories in the 1890s, this marvel of lights and shadows we call the motion picture. One more entry in the catalogue of scientific and engineering achievements that had changed the world in the 19th century -the electric light, the telegraph, the telephone, the steamship and the steam locomotive - it was the follow-up to Edison's phonograph and, in his words, was to 'do for the eye what the phonograph did for the ear.' What it actually did was far surpass the impact of the phonograph and become, in time, joined by radio and television, the world's great provider of mass entertainment, molder of public opinion and setter of fashions, trends and modes of behavior. Oddly, for a man with an almost unerring instinct for what the public needed and would appreciate, Edison showed little interest in his latest brainchild and was slow to recognize its potential. From the start, its development was left in the hands of his brilliant assistant, William K L Dickson, and once it was in its first working order in 1891, Edison regarded it as little more than a toy and was content to let it remain so. And indeed, it seemed a mere toy, with its pictures photographed on Eastman celluloid film inside a box-like camera called the Kinetograph and then viewed, one person at a time, by peering through the window of another box-like contraption, the Kinetoscope, while turning a hand crank. Looking at it all, Edison shrugged off the advice of his colleagues that the invention be developed to the point where the picturescould be projected on a screen and seenby entire audiences rather than single individuals. Despite the great man's indifference...