1893: 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.
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Breakthroughs and Busts: Mapping Cinema's Technological EvolutionBlack 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 (about $15,000 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 (six bucks these days), and others soon followed in San Francisco, Chicago and Atlantic City.
Although Edison demolished Black Maria in 1903, a replica was built in 1954 and stands at the Edison National Historic Site in West Orange.
Source: Wikipedia
Image: Frame from The Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, one of the earliest films made at the Black Maria studio.
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This article first appeared on Wired.com Feb. 1, 2008.
