Today in Technology History

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February 1

On this date in 1893, Thomas Edison opened the world's first motion picture studio in West Orange, New Jersey.

Edison, perhaps the most prolific inventor the world has ever seen, had been experimenting with moving pictures for several years. Instead of using film and projectors, Edison used a series of sequential photographs. When viewed through the peephole of a special viewing device, a Kinetoscope, the pictures gave the illusion of motion.

Sunlight was needed to record the images, so Edison and his staff designed a building with a hinged roof that could be opened to let the light in. What's more, the entire building was mounted on a giant turntable, so it could be turned to take advantage of the light as the sun moved across the sky. The building was covered with black tar paper, and called the "Black Maria," a slang term for the police wagons which the building resembled.

Edison never devised a way to synchronize sound with his images, so all his movies were silent. He recorded hundreds of movies, most of them less than two minutes long. Most were recordings of ordinary activities -- in fact, the first movie he copyrighted was of an assistant sneezing.

Edison had the Black Maria dismantled in 1903, as Kinetoscopes were by that time surpassed in popularity and practicality by film and projectors. That same year, one of his companies produced a film called The Great Train Robbery, the first motion picture hit.

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