Pioneers of Cinema
Best known for inventing the light bulb and the phonograph, this New Jersey-based businessman began selling kinetoscopes in 1891.
Thomas Edison
Long before celluloid film, traveling showmen would use these devices to present narrated slideshows to large audiences using elaborately painted glass plates.
Magic Lanterns
This silent film comedian became a global sensation after developing his signature persona, 'the Little Tramp', in 1914.
Charlie Chaplin
Small, storefront theaters exhibiting one and two reel films with live piano accompaniment in the early 20th century.
Nickelodeons
Directed by Edwin Porter in 1903, this early one-reeler established the western genre and utilized cross-cutting to build audience suspense.
The Great Train Robbery
This 'cinemagician' pioneered the trick film, movies that popularized special effects, including the stop trick, multiple exposures, and hand-painted color film.
Georges Melies
Sometimes called the Wheel of Life, this early motion toy resembled a carousel where the viewer would spin the wheel and peer through the cuts at repetitive animations.
Zoetrope
Harry Houdini bestowed this nickname on the child prodigy who famously tumbled down a backstage staircase and landed on his feet at the age of three.
Buster (Keaton)
The widespread studio practice where an A-list actor is the critical element in both the financing and marketing of motion pictures.
The Star System
This 1902 film about a group of astronomers' journey into space was a worldwide sensation and established science fiction and fantasy as lucrative film genres.
A Trip to the Moon
Inventors of the cinematographe, these French brothers staged the first public exhibition of films at the Grand Cafe in Paris in 1895.
Auguste and Louis Lumiere
Built at the Edison Labs, this early open-air production stage was built on a giant turntable and able to revolve with the sun to capture light throughout the day.
The Black Maria
After starring in such signature roles as The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera, this child of deaf adults became known as 'The Man of a Thousand Faces'.
Lon Chaney
The business practice where a film company owns and controls its own production, distribution, and exhibition.
Vertical Integration
Released in 1915 to great controversy and acclaim, this epic civil war re-enactment consisted of 16 reels and earned over $50 million dollars on its initial release.
The Birth of a Nation
Leland Stanford hired this San Francisco-based photographer to create an experiment to determine whether all of a horse's hooves leave the ground during a gallop.
Eadweard Muybridge
This inexpensive and popular optical toy of the 1800s consisted of a small cardboard disc with pieces of string attached to each side. When spun, the images would bleed together demonstrating persistence of vision.
Traumatrope
Known for orchestrating dangerous thrill sequences, including hanging from a clock tower above downtown Los Angeles, this silent film star earned himself the moniker 'The King of Daredevil Comedy'.
Harold Lloyd
A sales strategy where the studios require exhibitors to purchase their less desirable films in order to obtain their "A" titles.
Blockbooking
This 1922 masterwork of German Expressionism became the prototype for Universal's Dracula films in the early 1930s.
Nosferatu
Charged with heading up the film department at the Edison Lab, this engineer and showman devised a sprocket wheel that would regulate film speed, a critical step in the development of the kinetograph and kinetoscope.
William Dickson
The process Fox pioneered of edge-coding an audio optical track directly onto a film print.
Movietone
A member of Griffith's Biograph Company, this actress and co-founder of United Artists, became the first celebrity to sign a million-dollar contract, securing her position as 'America's Sweetheart'.
Mary Pickford
Already looking to capitalize on ancillary revenue streams in 1915, this early movie mogul invited the public to go on a studio tour where he collapsed a bridge, created a flash flood, and staged a western stunt show.
Carl Laemmle
Warner Brothers' first talking feature using the Vitaphone system became the biggest box office hit of 1927.
The Jazz Singer