Below is a snapshot of the Web page as it appeared on 4/14/2024 (the last time our crawler visited it). This is the version of the page that was used for ranking your search results. The page may have changed since we last cached it. To see what might have changed (without the highlights), go to the current page.
Bing is not responsible for the content of this page.
May 20, 1891 – Thomas Edison holds the first public presentation of his Kinetoscope for the National Federation of Women's Clubs.
August 24, 1891 – Edison files for a patent of the Kinetoscope.
1892 – In France, Charles-Émile Reynaud began to have public screenings in Paris at the Théâtre Optique, with hundreds of drawings on a reel that he wound through his Zoetrope projector to construct moving images that continued for 15 minutes.
March 14, 1893 – Edison is granted Patent #493,426 for "An Apparatus for Exhibiting Photographs of Moving Objects" (the Kinetoscope).
1893 – Edison builds a motion-picture studio near his laboratory, dubbed the Black Maria by his staff.
May 9, 1893 – In America, Edison holds the first public exhibition of films shot using his Kinetograph at the Brooklyn Institute. Only one person at a time could use his Kinetoscope viewing machine.
January 7, 1894 – Edison films his assistant, Fred Ottsneezing with the Kinetoscope at the "Black Maria".
April 14, 1894 – The first commercial presentation of the Kinetoscope takes place in the Holland Brothers' Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway, New York City.
1894 – Kinetoscope viewing parlors begin to open in major cities. Each parlor contains several machines.
1895 – In France, brothers named Auguste and Louis Lumière design and build a lightweight, hand-held motion picture camera called the Cinématographe. The brothers discover that their machine can also be used to project images onto a large screen. They create several short films at this time that are considered to be pivotal in the history of motion pictures.
January 1896 – In the United States, a projector called the Vitascope is designed by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. Armat begins to work with Edison to manufacture the Vitascope, which projects motion pictures.
April 1896 – Edison and Armat's Vitascope is used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City.
1896 – French magician and filmmaker Georges Méliès begins experimenting with the new motion picture technology, developing many early special effects techniques, including stop-motion photography.
1897 – A total of 125 people die during a film screening at the Charity Bazaar in Paris after a curtain catches on fire from the ether used to fuel the projector lamp.