KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI PUBLIC LIBRARY

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MAY 2 5 1982

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MAY 18 1987.

JAN 9 4 1990 YA*T

APR 20 B94

MAY 2 5

The Edison Motion Picture Myth

The Edison
Motion Picture
Myth

By

Gordon Hendricks

Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1961
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

London, England

1961 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 617532
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
DESIGNED BY MAJRION JACKSON SKINNER

To the memory of
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson

"YOU MAY SHARE THE LABORS OF THE GREAT,
BUT YOU WILL NOT SHARE THE SPOIL" ( AeSOp )

And to Guido Castelli and Kenneth Macgowan

KANSAS CITY (KG; PUSUC LIBRARY

Preface

I INTEND THIS BOOK TO SERVE TWO PURPOSES: (1) TO BE A BEGIN-

ning of the task of cleaning up the morass of well-embroidered
legend with which the beginning of the American film is
permeated and (2) to afford some measure of belated credit
to the work done by W. K. L. Dickson.

Although research in original sources is axiomatic for stu
dents of the history of other arts, in American film history
it is rare, and whatever exists has been often submerged in
trade-paper journalism. As someone has said in a review of
one volume of film "history," it is too often "inverted alchemy
, . . the process of taking the richest materials and turning
them into dross." Romances have thus been built around the
work of the pioneers romances to which the pioneers them
selves have added not a little. The advantage is held by the
man who lives the longest: as the years pass, fewer and fewer
of his colleagues remain to gainsay his extravagances.

With too few exceptions these romances have been left
undisturbed. And no set of motion picture claims has become
more firmly entrenched in the American mind than those of
Thomas Alva Edison claims made by himself, his chroniclers,
and writers in other fields who have taken "specialists" at their
word.

Although this investigation has been as impartial as I have
been able to make it, impartiality has not always been easy to

vu

sustain particularly in the face of the immodest claims of
Edison himself: 1

. . . when I invented the modern motion picture in the

Summer of 1889 . . .

... in 1887, when I was able to perfect the motion-picture

camera . . .

. . . there was no co-invention . . .

, . . the kinetograph [is] entirely my work . . .

. . . Paul, Lumiere, Jenkins & others . . . introduced only

minor details . . . they all use my original movements. . . .

Of course the public can't understand these things, and
it permits fakirs ... to claim the invention of the movies by
merely a change in a minor detail.
... it was our machine . . . [i.e., the Jenkins' Vitascope].

Surely, as Julian Hawkins said in the Electrical Engineer of
November 18, 1891: ". . . if Mr. Edison would quit inventing
and go in for fiction he would make one of the greatest novel
ists this country ever saw."

Being thus tempted, I have tried to exclude all interpreta
tions from this work which might permit a feeling that it was
"anti-Edison." Even when virtually convinced that an "anti-
Edison" theory was considerably more than theory, I have
refrained from setting it down.

The task of sifting history from myth has been enormously
complicated by the fact that, far from merely not recording
what actually happened, Edison and the Edison interests made
determined and sustained efforts to obscure it and indeed
built careful structures of fiction.

The powerful American tradition of hero-worship has further
more not helped matters, and such investigation as I have
undertaken may be considered disrespectful. One thinks of
nothing so much as Mencken's remark: "If you are against
labor racketeers, then you are against the working man . . .
If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer
Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die."

'These are quoted, in order, from: Moving Picture World, 1909, p. 293;
Munsey's, March, 1913; Edison laboratory letter book E1717, 4/13/94-
8/27/95, p. 413; Electrical Engineer (British), November, 1894; unpublished
notes in the West Orange archives, made in 1925 during an effort of the Edi
son junto to persuade the Franklin Institute not to credit C. Francis Jenkins
for the phantascope as a significant motion picture invention; and Equity
#6928 (see page 3), Complainant's Record, p. 115.

Vlll

In this task of sifting history from non-history I have been
helped by the men to whom this book is dedicated and, almost
beyond description, by many other persons who agreed with
me that facts are worth recording. First among these are the
members of the staff of the West Orange laboratory. It was
in this rich monument of the past that I was first inspired to
write this account. From the first day, and the first conversa
tion with Mr. Norman Speiden, supervisory curator, I was
assured of the most helpful cooperation. Through the several
years that followed, this helpfulness was sustained in the
fullest fashion, and was often the cause of considerable em
barrassment to me since I soon began to realize that my
account must fly in the face of what had gone before. It is a
fine measure of the stature of Mr. Speiden and his colleague,
Mr. Harold Anderson, that even after they realized my chang
ing viewpoint their cooperation diminished not at all. Their
natural loyalties in no wise interfered with what they con
sidered to be their duties: helping me in my free research in
whatever laboratory documents were available.

Cheerful cooperation was also given by Miss Kathleen Oliver
of the staff, who must often have dreaded to see me come,
since she knew that it would mean the additional crowding
of an already crowded schedule.

When the laboratory became a National Monument in 1956
and was taken over by the National Park Service, additional
members of the staff Mrs. Alberta Appleby and Mr. Melvin
Weig, superintendent cheerfully continued this cooperation.
(For the benefit of those who may be interested in knowing
exactly what archives materials I examined in my study, a list
of these materials may be seen at the Edison museum, the
George Eastman House, and the library of the Museum of
Modern Art. It should be noted here for the benefit of other re
searchers that many of the dates noted on photographs and
documents in the West Orange archives are necessarily inac
curate. And where no information was available to determine
these dates, estimates therefor have sometimes been produced.
It should also be recorded that the method used to mark these
dates as only estimates is contrary to both logic and accepted
archivist practice: they are enclosed in parentheses, indicating
an aside. In no case that I can recall has the customary question-

IX

mark been used. A case in point is a photograph of a horse and
rig in front of a laboratory building. The photograph is signed
"W. K. L. Dickson," but beyond knowing that it was taken
between the fall of 1887 when the building was built, and
April, 1895, when Dickson left the laboratory, there is no justifi
cation whatever for the " ( 1893 ) " written on the reverse. )

Next my gratitude must go to Mr. Beaumont Newhall, Di
rector of die George Eastman House in Rochester, New York,
who from the first heartily applauded and encouraged my
efforts to research the motion picture beginnings of America.
I am also grateful to Mr. Newhall for his reading of the manu
script, and for his eloquent endorsement of it.

I am grateful to Mr. Ernest Callenbach, of the University
of California Press, for his efforts in bringing this book into
print efforts more difficult because there is so little precedent
for a serious work of film history.

I am grateful to the Misses Allene and Elsie Archer, of
Baltimore, Maryland, and Richmond, Virginia, for many ex
ceedingly pleasant hours spent talking about their great-aunt,
the first Mrs. Dickson, and for their many favors in the prepara
tion of this book.

I am grateful to Miss Kathleen Poison, of Twickenham,
Middlesex, whose kind and intelligent efforts in behalf of my
work resulted in more than one interesting discovery; and to
her friend Miss Storey, who accompanied us on a memorable
visit to Dickson's grave in Twickenham. Miss Poison's gift of
a valuable collection of glass negatives has enriched my re
search.

I am also grateful to Dr. R. A. Albray of Newark; to Dr.
Elizabeth Baker, Professor Emeritus of Economics, Barnard
College; to Mr. A. Barclay and Dr. S. E. Janson of the Science
Museum, London; to Miss Geraldine Beard, Mr. Arthur
Carlson, and Dr. James Heslin of the New York Historical
Society; to Miss Mabel Bishop of the Virginia Bureau of
Vital Statistics, Richmond; to Mr. Willi Borberg of General
Precision Instruments, with whom I had many a pleasant lunch;
to Mr. Wyatt Brummitt and Mr. Glenn Matthews of the East
man Kodak Company, Rochester; to M. Maurice Daumas,
Conservateur du Conservatoire Nationale des Arts et Metiers,

Paris; to Sarah. Dennen, Jessie Carter Duncan, and A. H. Carter
for their intelligent kindnesses in my Friese-Greene research;
to the Devonald family of East Orange, New Jersey; to Miss
Lotte Eisner of the Cinematheque Frangaise, Paris; to Mr.
Ellstadt, of the Bausch and Lomb Company, Rochester, New
York; to Mr. James Flexner; to Miss Bess Glenn, the gracious
and intelligent head of the Justice and Executive Branch of the
National Archives, and to Mr. Cummings, Mr. Leisinger and Dr.
Rheingold of the National Archives; to Dr. Alfred Goldsmith
for his valuable opinions on the Edison caveats; to Mr. Sylvan
Harris, former editor of the Journal of the Society of Motion
Picture Engineers; to Dr. Thomas Harvey of Orange; to Mr.
John Melville Jennings of the Virginia Historical Society; to
Miss Grace Mayer, Mr. Bernard Karpel, and Mr. Rolf Petersen
of the Museum of Modern Art; to Dr. John Kintzig and Mr.
Charles Young of the Photographic Division, Mr. Joseph Mask
of the Main Reading Room and Miss Dawn Pohlman of the
Science Division, of the New York Public Library; to Mr. Brad
ley Leonard of the Newark Public Library; to Mr. Robert
Lovett of Baker Library, Harvard University; to Mr. Macartney
of the Copyright Division, and to Colonel Willard Webb, Chief
of the Stack and Reader Division, of the Library of Congress;
to Mr. Don Malkames for many pleasant conversations; to Mr.
Jack McCullough of the Motion Picture Association; to Mr.
George Pratt of the George Eastman House, Rochester; to Miss
Georgia E. Raynor of the Orange Free Public Library; to Mr.
Charles Reynolds of Popular Photography; to Mr. T. V. Roberts,
Borough Librarian, Borough of Twickenham, England; to Dr.
R. S. Schultze of Kodak Limited, Harrow, England; to Mr. Bud
Schwalberg; to Mrs. Sedgewick of Twickenham, England; to
Miss Miriam Studley of the Newark Public Library, and Mr.
Fred Shelley, formerly of the New Jersey Historical Society
and now of the Library of Congress, both of whom helped me
with rare good will and rarer intelligence; to Dr. Louis Sipley
of the American Museum of Photography, Philadelphia; to Mr.
Ed Wade of Infinity for an illuminating analysis of the tech
nical side of the Archives seven-frame strip; to Dr. Alexander
Wedderburn of the Smithsonian Institution; to the Twickenham
lady who was Dickson's housekeeper during his last days; to my
correspondent at the Royal Geographical Society; to the

XI

friendly staff of the Engineering Societies Library, New York;
and to all others whose names I may have inadvertently omitted
from this list.

In addition, I am grateful to the following for allowing the
reprinting of copyrighted material:

Appleton- Century-Crofts for a quotation from Faulkner's Amer
ican 'Political and Social History, 1957;

Doubleday & Company for a quotation from Smith's Two Reels
and a Crank, 1952;

Callaghan and Company for a quotation from Hopkins' The
Law of Patents, 1909;

The Columbia University Press for a quotation from Eder's
History of Photography, 1945;

E. P. Button & Company, Inc. for a quotation from Tate's
Edisons Open Door, 1938;

The Encyclopedia Britannica for quotations from their 1956
edition;

The General Alumni Society of the University of Pennsylvania
for a quotation from George Nitzsche in their General Maga
zine and Historical Chronicle, Vol. LIV, No. 1;
Lewis Jacobs for a quotation from his The Rise of the Ameri
can Film, 1939;

Marsland Publications for a quotation from Allister's Friese-
Greene: Close-Up of an Inventor, 1951;

McGraw-Hill for quotations from Josephson's Edison, 1959;
The G. & C. Merriam Company for quotations from their
dictionary, 1959;

The Museum of Modern Art, for a quotation from NewhalTs
The History of Photography, 1949;

The New York Times, for a quotation from the Times of
October 3, 1935;

Charles Scribner's Sons, for a quotation from Burlingame's
Engines of Democracy, 1940;

Simon and Schuster, for quotations from Ramsaye's A Million
and One Nights, 1926;

The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, for
quotations from their Journal, 1928 and 1933;
The University of Rochester for quotations from Ackerman's
George Eastman, 1930;

and James T. White & Company for a quotation from their
National Cyclopedia of American Biography, Vol. IX, p. 193.

On the debit side, I cannot refrain from commenting upon
the many librarians and library assistants who proudly told me
that their newspapers were on microfilm and when I asked
them what had become of the old, were only able to say, "But

xu.

Mr. Hendricks, they were falling apart!" Few of these failed
to ask me why I wanted the original volumes a question no
one who has done serious research would find it necessary to
ask. From such enemies within the gates history also has much
to fear.

G. H.

XUL

Contents

Introduction, 1

1 The First Stimulus, 3

2 The First Motion Picture Caveat,

3 The First Motion Picture Work, 23

4 The First Advance, 32

5 The Carbutt Film, 38

6 Edison Goes to Europe, 48

7 The Eastman Flexible Film, 53

8 The Dickson Kinetoscope Notebook, 68

9 The ''Photograph Building," 75

10 The French Influence, 79

11 The Lenox Lyceum Projection, 84

12 The Summer of 1890, 92

13 The Fall of 1890, 99

XV

14 The First Press Stories, 103

15 The Kinetoscope's Public Debut, 111

16 America's Rarest Film, 118

17 The Summer and Fall of 1891, 122

18 The Patent Applications, 130

19 The First "Modern" Motion
Pictures, 138

APPENDIXES

A A Biographical Sketch of

W. K. L. Dickson, 143
B Original Texts of the Four Motion

Picture Caveats, 158

G Fifty Representative Dickson Errors, 163
D Selected References to the Work of

Other Men, 168
E The Horizontal-Feed Camera in the

Edison Museum, 180

Matthew Josephson's Edison, 1 90

INDEX, 198

xvi

Illustrations

(following page 142)

W. K. L. Dickson in his London office

The Edison Laboratory, January, i889

The "Photograph Building" 1889

The "Monkey shines" subject

"Kinetoscope No.l"

"America's Rarest Film"

The Ford Museum camera

The first "modern" motion pictures

W. K. L. Dickson and Jules Etienne Marey

The "May, 1891" horizontal-feed camera

The Kayser photograph

XVll

Introduction

/'OFFICIAL" MOTION PICTURE HISTORY HAS GIVEN THE LION'S SHARE
of credit for invention to Thomas Edisonl There has been an
occasional backward glance at Edison's employee, W. K. L.
Dickson, but Edison's prominence in American life has made
the attribution to him easy, and historians have been loath to
change it. The most prominent historian of the early period
of the American film, Terry Ramsaye, had continuous cordial
personal contact with Edison during the preparation of his
history, and although he has occasionally and upon details
gainsaid Edison claims, Ramsaye's work is far too indulgent
to go unchallenged.

Since the Ramsaye history has been virtually the only treat
ment of this period and the only extensive one historians
of the film, not being inclined to do research on any particular
period of their history, have rerecorded Ramsaye, although
they must have wondered more than once about his reliability.
Edison did not like Dickson; Ramsaye liked Edison and shared
his dislike of Dickson. This disapproval was not lessened by
Dickson's many errors. (See Appendix C.) The George East
man biographers have aided the aggrandizement of Edison
in the process of claiming for their hero some of the glory
which shone from the "Wizard of Menlo Park." The most any
one has done is to attribute a small part of the credit to
Dickson. Writers of reference books, as is their wont, have
merely followed the "authority" of the field. As a result, en-

cyclopedias, almanacs, and text-books ascribe most or all the
invention of the American film to Thomas Edison. Few of
these so much as mention the work of W. K. L. Dickson.

The work with which this volume is concerned began in
1888 and ended in 1892 with the achievement of the "modem"
motion picture at the West Orange laboratory. Dickson, who
had been hired for his electrical interests and ability, was
particularly interested and skilled in the whole subject of
photography; when the motion picture work began, he became
its natural mentor, and continued the work to its culmination
in the fall of 1892. He was twenty-three years of age when
he entered Edison's employ, had come to America four years
previously, and like many young men of the time, had his own
share of hero-worship for the famous electrician-industrialist.
He was given successively more important jobs to do, and when
the motion picture swam into the Edison ken, he was given
this matter to "handle" although he was consistently refused
the time and cooperation necessary for its best fulfillment.

Edison and his men at West Orange tried everything. Noth
ing was too trivial or obscure. If it occurred to them they
proposed to try it (although much that they proposed to do
never got done). "Motion photography" was no exception.
Everyone was talking about it in 1887 and for some time previ
ously b u t chiefly after the Muybridge publications in 1887
and the Marey publications of the same year and Edison was
not one to encounter this new problem without wanting to
solve it himself. The story of this solution by one of his men,
derived from the first systematic examination ever made of
the laboratory records and other original sources, constitutes
the present history.

1 The First Stimulus

THE CHIEF CBEDIT FOR WHAT IS GENERALLY KNOWN AS THE EDISON

motion picture work must rest with Edison's employee, W. K. L.
Dickson (see Appendix A for biographical sketch), but for
whose interest, perseverance, and mechanical and inventive skill
none of this work would have been accomplished. If this study
is rather an account of the work of Dickson than an account of
the work of Edison, it is because it is the work of Dickson which
is the "Edison" motion picture story. Much error, concerning
the work per se, his relations with Edison, and his own claims
to accomplishment, can be laid at Dickson's door (see Appendix
C ) , but it is nevertheless true that what was accomplished was
accomplished because Dickson was there, and the conscientious
historian must confine Edison's contribution to his sponsoring
of Dickson, and to the intelligence and energy which made the
West Orange laboratory the scene of the commercial prepara
tion of so many of the ideas of other men.

There is no evidence that motion pictures of any kind were
produced at the Edison laboratory until the fall of 1889, or that
they were produced on what we know as <c film" until May, 1891:
this in spite of the sworn testimony of Edison himself and many
of his men to the contrary and frequent averments by nearly
everyone else. 1

There is furthermore no evidence that the motion picture was

1 E.g., "Complainant's Record/' Equity 6928, the United States Circuit
Court of the Southern District of New York.

even thought about in terms of an Edison project until Novem
ber, 1888; or that when work was begun it was done by Edison
himself; or that Edison had, indeed, any interest at all in the
project until he began to realize that it had publicity value; or
that even then he did anything toward making the project prac
tical; or that any single part of any of the so-called Edison
motion picture inventions actually contains any Edison inven
tion; or that he even made any serious claim to the invention
of motion picture photography until the vitascope of C. Francis
Jenkins became, in 1896, a means to recoup the tremendous
loss of time and money Edison had incurred in the previous five
years by a combination of misjudgment and stubbornness in the
ore-milling business.

From the first work to the vitascope debut in 1896, and with
the exception of the 905 kinetoscopes produced by the Edison
Manufacturing Company before the vitascope debut, 2 Edison
merely permitted others to do what they could with motion
picture work both developmental and exploitation, and this
only over protest.

When Eadweard Muybridge lectured in Orange, New Jersey,
on February 25, 1888, at the invitation of the New England
Society, 3 the fact that Edison's laboratory was in the same city
was only coincidence. In retrospect, and with the knowledge we
now have that the work of Muybridge was important in stimu
lating motion picture work at the Edison laboratory, it may
seem that these two facts are interdependent. But even a slight
study of the period will convince us that Hartford, Albany, Bos
ton, Cincinnati, or any of hundreds of other American cities
could have invited (and often did invite) this famous authority
on animal locomotion to lecture.

Orange was the principal member of a four-town group of
Newark suburbs, the others being West Orange (to which Edi
son's laboratory came in 1887), South Orange, and East Orange,
this latter perhaps the most fashionable of the four. In 1890
Orange's population was 18,844.

a A file of selected legal miscellany including notes by the Edison attorneys
lists kinetoscopes manufactured. See number E 190-0.292-2.1 to 2.47 in the
Edison archives.

3 Orange Chronicle, March 3, 1888.

During the ascendancy of the wet collodion process there was
widespread interest in so-called "instantaneous" photography.
Such photography, however, was only infrequently achieved.
("Infrequently" is only appropriate here when it is considered
in relation to the many more such photographs possible after
the gelatino-bromide process was discovered. The word "in
stantaneous" itself, as a contemporary wrote, was "as elastic a
term as the expression long and short/ " 4 yet it clearly repre
sented all short exposures at the beginning of the era. Exposures
of less than a second were so called, and soon it became possible
to reduce exposures to % 5 of a second and beyond. One writer
referred to "instantaneous" as meaning, in 1888, "exposures made
by hand, of a quarter of a second or less." 5 ) In general it may
be said that the wet collodion process by its very nature ex
cluded such photography. As Eder says: 6 "The introduction of
'instantaneous' photography was hastened by difficulties of the
wet collodion process." But after 1871 the Maddox invention of
the gelatino-bromide process made possible dry-plate "instan
taneous" photography exciting, sharp-edge glimpses of life.
Although W. H. Harrison had used gelatin as a binding agent
for silver bromide his images were useless because his emulsions
were too rough. Dr. Richard L. Maddox, as Eder says (op. cit,),
"succeeded in obtaining the first satisfactory images on gelatine
silver bromide." Maddox's first notice of his new process is
dated September 8, 1871. Eder also names Poitevin ( 1850 ) and
Gaudin (1853) as other early experimenters in the process.

The new process was particularly suitable for fast exposures
because it was a dry process : the sensitive silver could now re
main sensitive after its suspending agent (gelatin in the new
process, collodion in the older) had dried. Indeed, it was found
that ripening the emulsion some days or a week increased its
rapidity, whereas in the wet process the exposure had to be
made in a few seconds. (See the Newhall quotation, page 20.)
And the gelatin emulsions were from ten to a hundred times
more sensitive than collodion-bromide.

According to most authorities, however, the dry-plate process

* Theodore Skaife, Instantaneous Photography ( Greenwich, 1860 ) .

5 Anthony's Photographic Bulletin, June 9, 1888.

6 Joseph Maria Eder, History of Photography. (New York: Columbia Uni
versity press, 1945, ) Hereafter cited simply as "Eder."

of "instantaneous" photography did not become generally used
until the early 'eighties. This is indeed self-evident from the
popular periodical literature of the time.

With the wide distribution of the Eastman flexible film and
the Eastman stripping film, beginning in 1884, many thousands
of amateurs began trying to catch life motions on film. 7

The classic work of Eadweard Muybridge still to be out
moded in spite of the curious rancor of at least one historian
(see below) was then and is now the transcendent tour de
force of life motion photography. 8 Muybridge had been lectur
ing widely and with considerable artistic and commercial suc
cess for many years, had been heard in and around New York
many times, and was a figure of national interest through maga
zine articles on his work. It was only natural that the chief
lecture-sponsoring group in Orange should have invited him to
visit.

For reasons which seem to have originated from a combina
tion of journalistic sensation-seeking and his obviously favor
able impression of John D. Isaacs (whom he "found" in Mas
sachusetts) Terry Ramsaye seems to have been "out to get"
Muybridge. No one close to the facts will fail to recognize this
feeling in the following lines from A Million and One Nights: 9

Now the photographer from California was acclaimed and on
the road to greatness. He hastened to London in his native
England to bask in glory. He lectured with large profundity
and tooting astuteness before the Royal Institution. John D.
Isaacs, busy railroading in faraway California read about it and
grinned. . . . Everything that developed [i.e., the relation of
his work to the motion picture. One wonders here what a "mo
tion picture" was to Ramsaye] was . . . the sheerest coinci
dence. He was engaged solely in stopping the horse on the
plate, by methods handed to him for the purpose.

7 Eder mentions Melhuish and Spencer (1854) as Eastman's predecessors
in the roll-holder type of camera, and Warnerke (1875) as a predecessor in
coating (and later stripping) paper with silver in gelatin. Milmson (1877) and
Ferran and Pauli (1880) were others who coated paper with the new dry
emulsion. In 1884, however, all these were overshadowed by the wide avail
ability of Eastman's paper film, from which the emulsion could be stripped and
used.

8 A projected monograph will discuss Muybridge's work, which seems to me
to be the chief stimulus for the mechanical invention upon which the Ameri
can motion picture is based.

9 New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926. Pp. 41-42. Herafter cited simply as
"Ramsaye."

Ramsaye continues by comparing Muybridge's fame to that of
the "Boer farmer who was using a giant Kimberly diamond for
a door weight when a mining expert called/' discounting en
tirely the tremendous amount of careful and imaginative work
done by Muybridge.

Since this work is intended to deal with facts, detailed treat
ment of the famous statement by Edison that he began work
in 1887, the year before Muybridge's lecture, and the later one
by Dickson that "In the year 1887, Mr. Edison found himself
in possession of one of those breathing spells. ... It was then
that a series of experiments was entered upon at the Orange
Laboratory . . ." seems inappropriate. 10 Edison's Century Mag
azine statement, repeated by Dickson in an article in Gassier s
Magazine in December, 1894, supplementary to his long series
titled "The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison," and
later published in book form, is only a repetition of error.

This series was begun in Gassier s in November, 1892, as the
lead article of the issue. The frontispiece of this issue was the
photograph reproduced later on page 31 of the Dicksons' bi
ography of Edison. The series ran through November of the
next year. Its airy persiflage contained a run-down of most of
Edison's life to date with the customary aggrandizements. It
was later published in book form in both America and England
in 1894 as The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison,
although Dickson seems to have gotten little or no remunera
tion for it. 11

Judging by Dickson's other and soberer writings, the book's
objectionable style stems principally from his sister Antonia,
who fits well into Thomas Beer's definition of a late-nineteenth-
century "author": "a dreadful person who likes to write books."
Dickson himself no doubt warmly acquiesced in these often
mawkish wanderings, which were so exaggerated that more

10 From the Century Magazine, June, 1894; reprinted in Antonia and W. K. L.
Dickson's History of the Kinetograph Kinetoscope and^ Kineto-Phono graph ( New
York: Albert Bunn, 1895); reprinted also in Dickson's article in the December,
1933, Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers (hereafter cited simply
as "Dickson's 1933 article"): "In the year 1887, the idea occurred to me that
it was possible to devise an instrument which could do for the eye what the
phonograph does for the ear . . ."

11 See a January 3, 1894, letter from Dickson to Dyer and Seely in the docu
ment files at the West Orange laboratory.

than one reviewer even in a day famed for romantic exaggera
tion was moved to satire. For example, the British Electrical
Review 12 said:

This series has been in progress during the last eight months
. . . Each seems more likely "to be continued in our next/'
than the last.

We are generally prepared, in the month of June, to make
allowance for excesses of fine feeling, as Byron did; but even
in June it requires a specially wrought individual to bestow a
deep enthusiasm upon the glow from an electric lamp. The
June number of Gassier s begins thus: "The breathings of
Marsyas's flute which trenched upon the golden harmonies of
Phoebus Apollo, and the flowing fabric of Arachne which
outvied the textile intricacies of Pallas Athene; the spell of
Arion which smoothed the wrinkled brow of ancient Oceanus,
and the magic strains of Orpheus, at which the basaltic gates
of Hades rolled suddenly back on their adamantine hinges, all
these endangered the attributes of Olympus, and the gods
themselves became ashamed of their earthly children. But the
majesty of heaven entrenched itself in the mysterious and
deadly arsenal of the skies, in the thunder-bolts of Zeus, the
steel-blue Aegis of the sheet lightning, the forked spears and
chains of deadly fire/'

By a more or less natural sequence this florid language leads
to the contemplation of the voltaic arc . . .

Both Dickson and Ramsaye, in point of fact, even claimed
1886 for such a "breathing spell" as Dickson described. 13 But
anyone who examines the Edison archives will doubt that 1887
contained such a "breathing spell." It is difficult to credit that,
according to normal standards, Edison took such a break in any
of these years. The Dicksons' florid description of this time in
their History of the Kinetograph Kinetoscope and Kineto-Pho-
nograph fails to convince: "The great issues of electricity were
satisfactorily under way. The incandescent light had received
its finishing touches; telephonic telegraphic devices were sub
stantially interwoven with the fabric of international life; the

^August 18, 1893.

13 Ramsaye, page 50; Dickson, in a letter to Glenn E. Matthews, in the Mat
thews collection, Rochester. (See also Matthews letter of August 7, 1933. Also
in a letter to Meadowcroft, Edison's secretary, of April 21, 1928, in the histori
cal files of the Edison archives at the West Orange laboratory, "Mot. Pic. Hist.
Dickson Articles and Letters."

phonograph was established on what seemed to be a solid
financial and social basis . . ."

And in fact there is no evidence that anyone at the West
Orange laboratory gave motion pictures a thought until October
8, 1888, the time of the first motion picture caveat (see page
14 ). In any case, the matter does not seem crucial since many
others both in the United States and abroad had given innumer
able thoughts to motion pictures long before this. The crucial
matter is what was done about these thoughts, and we have
direct evidence, as I will show, that little was done at the West
Orange laboratory until some years later.

The documents files of the Edison archives contain, for 1887,
only one item classified (albeit improperly) by the laboratory
staff as a motion picture item. This is a letter from the Scovill
Manufacturing Company dated December 17, 1887, in which
Edison is asked to confirm "memorandum invoice of goods se
lected by Mr. Wm. K. L. Dickson." (Matthew Josephson, in his
recent biography of Edison, 14 see Appendix F for an analysis
of errors in this work mentions this, but, properly, does not
ascribe this visit to motion picture work, as the laboratory
cataloguers have done. )

The 1888 motion picture and Muybridge files contain many
items improperly ascribed to motion picture work. Of the
twenty-six items so filed only the following twelve appear rele
vant to motion pictures :

(1) A sketch of a cylinder machine.

(2) A sketch of a cylinder machine.

(3) A sketch of a cylinder machine.

(4) A letter from Eaton, Edison's attorney. Edison had
sought a name for the apparatus described in the first motion
picture caveat, October 10, 1888.

(5) Another such, from Daniel Chamberlain, same date.

(6) Another such, from Lewis, Eaton's partner, same date.

(7) Ten handwritten pages of the first motion picture caveat.
(See Appendix B.)

(8) Letter from Muybridge, dated May 12, 1888. (See page
27.)

(9) Letter from Muybridge, dated November 28, 1888. (See
page 28.)

14 Matthew Josephson, Edison. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959. Page 385.
Hereafter cited simply as "Josephson."

(10) A brochure re the Muybridge plates, apparently enclosed
with the May 12 letter.

(11) A card introducing Edison to the Muybridge publishers,
also apparently enclosed with the May 12 letter.

(12) A carbon copy of an Edison letter asking Muybridge to
select the plates for him.

A strong case is thus made for the position that the only mo
tion picture activity at the Edison laboratory up to the end of
1888 concerned the Muybridge material and the first motion
picture caveat.

It is possible that both Edison and Dickson attended this
February 25 lecture by Muybridge. Edison's reason for going
would have been two-fold. In the first place he had already,
after twenty- two months as a West Orange citizen, 15 established
a policy of what was then and is now known as "civic-minded-
ness." There is little to suggest that he ever supported a "worthy
cause" in those days from any inner conviction of his own, or
that any social group such as the New England Society that
sponsored the lecture would ever have involved him if it had
not been for the inclinations of his new bride. 16 But belonging
to and attending the affairs of this Society was clearly "the thing

15 As of January 28, 1887, the laboratory property purchase was being nego
tiated (letter book E1730, 10/12/86-2/21/87, page 260). A Josephson error,
page 309, says that it had been bought by the previous year. On May 5 Edi
son wrote that he would want nothing for his new laboratory for another two
months. (Letter book E1730, 2/21/87-6/14/87, page 426.) On June 18, the
Orange Journal announced that "ground will be broken in a few days." On July
5, ground was broken (Scientific American, September 17, 1887). By July 12
the foundation was in (letter book E1730, 6/21/87-10/22/87, page 25). By
September 14 the laboratory "had not been completed" (letter book E1730,
6/21/87-10/22/87, page 92). On about November 1, Edison appears to have
established himself at the new location (Edison archives document files "Edison
El. Lt. Co. 1887"). On November 8 he said "My laboratory will be ready"
on December 1, (letter book E1730, 8/29/87-10/15/88, page 33). On Thanks
giving Day, according to Fred Ott, they moved in; but on December 21 Edison
was still saying that the laboratory would be "completed" in about two months.
(Letter book E1740, 8/29/87-10/15/88, page 89.)

18 Mina Miller, of Akron, Ohio, daughter of Lewis Miller, called the "father"
of the Chautauqua idea by Dyer, Martin, and Meadowcroft (Edison, His Life
and Inventions. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1929. Hereafter cited simply
as "Dyer, Martin, and Meadowcroft.") whom he had married two years previ
ously and concerning whom there is every indication that she was socially
minded. (See, for example, descriptions in the Orange newspapers of many
social affairs, of which the May 20, 1891, reception see chap. 15 is a case in
point. )

10

to do" in those lecture-ridden days of the late nineteenth cen
tury when much of America felt that Culture was something to
be acquired as one would acquire a "Queen Anne" house, or
would go to the shore on the first of July to spend as much of
the next two months as possible in an elaborate "cottage."

There is also no doubt that Edison, because of his consistent
and vigorous interest in all scientific matters, would have been
more than ordinarily interested in this lecture. It would perhaps
be fair to say that Mrs. Edison might have had less trouble than
usual in persuading him to go although he was a man whose
actions frequently belied his avowals of contempt for social
affairs. In any case he appears to have readily agreed to see
Muybridge the Monday following the lecture. (February 25,
1888, the date of the lecture, was a Saturday.) If he went, he
may have met the lecturer personally after the program as
Muybridge must have himself been eager to meet the Oranges'
most famous citizen and either volunteered the invitation or
readily acceded to a proposal of a visit.

Dickson, with his lively interest in all things photographic,
and with so much interest being had in these days by all pho
tographers in the "instantaneous" photography of life, may also
have attended the lecture. We cannot rule out the social side of
the matter with Dickson also. He would have felt that such an
Orange social affair would be the sort of thing he "ought" to
attend, although he had not yet moved there with his socially
minded wife and sister. (See Appendix A.)

We can be sure also that the Monday visit was about the idea
of joining the phonograph with pictures of motion. 17 Edison was
even more famous for his phonograph than Muybridge was for
his photographs, and such a discussion was natural. Both men
were anything but blind to the publicity values of such a visit
whether or not either had any serious idea of such a motion
picture-phonograph combination as both afterward claimed.

Of this interview there can be no doubt, and no more doubt

17 The angle of displacement, although sometimes so small as to be imper
ceptible to the eye, is nevertheless always existent in photographs of moving
objects. We therefore see moving objects actually "in motion" whenever we
view photographs taken while this movement occurred, although the image
on the plate may seem perfectly sharp to us. ". . . One high authority," says
Anthony's Photographic Bulletin of March 26, 1887, places the amount of dis
placement allowable for sharpness at ^50 of an inch.

11

that they talked of joining photographs to the phonograph
although this was later denied, in characteristic fashion, by
Edison.

In the preface to Animals in Motion, 1899, Muybridge said:
"It may be here parenthetically remarked that on the 27th of
February, 1888, the author . . .consulted with Mr. Thomas A.
Edison as to the practicability of using [the zoopraxiscope] in
association with the phonograph . . ."

In the margin of the Ramsaye manuscript now at Harvard
University, opposite the Ramsaye remark that Muybridge had
"wanted to interest Edison in uniting this device with the pho
nograph" Edison has noted: "No Muybridge came to Lab to
show me picture of a horse in motion nothing was said
about phonogph." In characteristic fashion, and again without
checking the unsupported statements of pioneers, Ramsaye
"improved" Edison's remark, excised all such claims from his
history, and said, on page 44, "It makes a handsome paragraph,
but it does not fit the unaggressive Muybridge pattern." Yet
Ramsaye has been at pains elsewhere to establish precisely
Muybridge's aggressiveness. As for the Edison remark, shortly
after the visit occurred he himself stated in specific, unmistak
able terms that the topic of this conversation was the joining
of these two inventions. 18 Josephson (page 384) repeats the
fiction that this visit was two years earlier.

Muybridge was not the only life-motion photographer who
stimulated motion picture work at the Edison laboratory. The
work of Ottomar Anschiitz, for example, is also significant. 19 It
has been stated categorically by at least one writer that the

18 New "York World, June 3, 1888.

19 Anschiitz was born in 1846 and died in 1907. He made single instantane
ous photographs in 1882 but was not well known until 1884 when his photo
graphs of birds in flight became famous for their unprecedented sharpness.
From 1885 onward he worked in photography of animals and human beings
in a continuous series of photographs. Eder (page 513) says that he made 24
exposures in % second, and that he was "far more successful and more^ precise
in obtaining the optical synthesis of these serial photographs into 'moving
pictures* than all his predecessors." His tachyscope, of which many were
installed in America in the few years following 1889 (see page 84 ff.), was
apparently introduced in early 1887 (see page 85), although there is some
reason to believe that it belongs to an earlier date. The Photographic Times of
April 22, 1887, mentioned a "recent" exhibition in New York City. Among very
interesting biographical material on Anschiitz, the reader is directed to Eder's
Jahrbuch fur photographic, 1887, page 107.

12

Anschiitz work was the most influential, 20 but there is no evi
dence to support this position. It is certainly true, however, that
things German interested Edison preeminently, and more partic
ularly he admired the achievements of the German scientists,
especially Helmholtz. 21 He subscribed to more German publica
tions than those in any other foreign language, 22 although he
did not read German himself not even enough to obtain the
gist of what was said, in spite of many statements to the con
trary. 23

The first prominent notice of the Anschiitz work that I have
found in American publications is one in The Philadelphia
Photographer of June 4, 1887 ( see chap. 11 for a fuller discus
sion of Anschiitz' work): "The photographer, Anschiitz, of
Lissa, has an apparatus ... for the most perfect stroboscopic
combination of the motion pictures produced by him . . ."

It is clear that men the whole world over, such as Marey in
France and Anschiitz in Germany, were stimulated by the work
of Muybridge, but it seems likely that it was the rapidly in
creasing pace of the public notices given to all these men which
stimulated Dickson to start the ball rolling in his "spare" time at
the Edison laboratory.

But on February 27, 1888, Dickson was deep in ore-milling
experiments 24 and Edison was deep in setting up his new labora
tory and in scores of other claims on his time. This preoccupa
tion with other matters continued until the next year, with

20 For example, Zglincki (Der Weg des Films, Berlin, 1957) on page 203
quotes Liesegang, a prominent German writer on photography, as saying that
Edison "found the starting point" for his kinetoscope in Anschiitz' schnellseher.

21 This admiration of Helmholtz reached an almost touching pointe aceree
on September 18, 1889, when Edison, visiting Helmholtz in Charlottenburg,
presented the German scientist with several phonographs. (Edison archives
document files "Synopses etc., 1889.")

22 The order of April 22, 1889, establishes this. On this date twelve technical
periodicals were subscribed to for the library of the new laboratory. Four of
these were French (including the Comptes Rendus of the Academy), three
were English, and five German. (Letter book, E1717, 4/8/89-5/21/89, p. 174.
This letter book is improperly titled 6/7/88-5/21/89.)

^Letter book E1730, 6/21/87-10/22/87, page 51. See also Dyer, Martin,
and Meadowcroft, page 745.

34 The Dickson note book, for example, #870610 in the Edison Museum,
West Orange, New Jersey, lists February 1, 4, 13, 27, 29; March 1, 3, 7, 10,
12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20; April 27; May 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8; June 15 as ore-milling
experiment days. Considerable additional correspondence for example a June
11, 1888 letter from Dickson in the document file "Edison Ore-Milling Com
pany" adds weight to this opinion.

13

Dickson giving only very occasional attention to his work as
the official laboratory photographer a considerable job in
itself. 25 It is further substantiated by the fact that in a list of
104 "Things doing and to be done/* dated January 3, 1888, from
an Edison notebook (N-880103.2), motion pictures are not
even obliquely mentioned, in spite of the fact that this list con
tains everything else we know to have been part of laboratory
experiments and a number of items that were never tried at
least visibly.

2 The First Motion
Picture Caveat

THE FIRST MOTION PICTURE ITEM IN THE EDISON WEST ORANGE

laboratory is dated October 8, 1888. This was the date upon
which Edison wrote his famous Motion Picture Caveat I, begin-
ing: "I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for
the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear . . ." This docu
ment, given in its original form in Appendix B (published here
for the first time), is extremely revealing of the man who wrote
it: his methods, his personality, and his knowledge of mechanics
in general and of photography in particular. It also reveals the
most advanced extent of motion picture thinking at the West
Orange laboratory as of October 8, 1888. 1 It deserves, therefore,
detailed consideration here. It is not widely known; few his
torians have discussed it. 2

25 The pressure to which Dickson was exposed in connection with this work
is often shown in the archives material. For example, items dated August 6,
1887 (document file "Photos Electric Light Early"), August 12, 1887, (ibid.),
March 31, 1889 (document files "Phonograph 1888"), April 2, 1888 (ibid.)
in which Edison wrote that Dickson was too busy with ore-milling to take the
photos requested. On May 28 and again on June 7, the Electrical Review
asked for photos and was not answered until August 6. On July 14, the Sci
entific American asked for photos but did not receive them until August 21.
All these references are from the document files.

*I cannot imagine why a man writing such an account of his work would
set down in a secret place ideas which he no longer possessed.

2 1 do not believe the word "caveat" appears in Ramsaye let alone a discus
sion thereof. Dyer, Martin, and Meadowcroft spend four pages (591-594)
discussing the Edison caveats but do not refer to those concerning motion

14

To begin with, a caveat, as defined by Webster's Dictionary
of that year, 1888, is: "A description of some invention, de
signed to be patented, lodged in the office before the patent
right is taken out, operating as a bar to applications respecting
the same invention, from any other quarter." And the law itself
reads (4902, R.S.U.S.):

Any person who makes any new invention or discovery and de
sires further time to mature the same may, on payment of the
fees required by law, file in the Patent Office, a caveat setting
forth the design thereof and its distinguishing characteristics
and praying protection of his right until he shall have matured
his invention. Such caveat shall be filed in the confidential
archives of the office and preserved in secrecy, and shall be
operative for the term of one year from the filing thereof; and
if application is made within the year by any other person for
a patent with which such caveat would in any manner inter
fere the Commissioner shall deposit the description, specifica
tion, drawings, and model of such application in like manner
in the confidential archives of the office and give notice thereof
by mail to the person by whom the caveat was filed. If such
person desires to avail himself of his caveat, he shall file his
description, specification, drawings, and model within three
months from the time of placing the notice in the postoffice in
Washington, and with the usual time required for transmitting
it to the caveator added thereto, which time shall be indorsed
on the notice.

Edison obviously filed caveats regularly to gain the benefit of
the "give notice" clause of the law. 3 His attorneys, however, as
we shall see later (Appendix D), in spite of the great dissimi
larity between the apparatus described in these caveats and the
apparatus described in the Edison motion picture patent appli
cations, and grasping at a last incredible straw to prosecute his

pictures. Byran (Edison: The Man and His Work. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
Inc., 1926), makes no mention of any such caveat. I have not found the word
in any Dickson writing, in Quigley (Magic Shadows. Washington: Georgetown
University Press, 1948), in Talbot (Moving Pictures. London: Heinemann,
1912), Bardeche and Brasillach (The History of the Motion Pictures. New
York: Norton and Company, 1938), Rotha and Griffith (The Film Till Now.
London: Vision, 1949), Knight (The Liveliest Art. New York: Macmillan,
1957), Jacobs (The Rise of the American Film. New York: Harcourt Brace,
1939), etc., etc.

3 Although I have not made a study of this matter, Dyer, Martin, and
Meadowcroft say on page 591 that Edison filed altogether one hundred and
twenty caveats. If we consider that many of these embraced dozens of items
each, we can readily conclude that his intention was to circumscribe from
other workers fields of endeavor which he could not possibly exploit himself.

15

application to issue, cited these caveats as proof of priority of
invention. 4 These citations were soon abandoned, however, by
Edison's attorneys and disregarded by every judge who ever
sat upon the litigation which arose as a result of the issue of
this patent. 5 (For a discussion of the beginning of the compli
cated course of this application through to its controversial issue,
see chap. 18.) Patent law authorities agree without any excep
tion that I have found that the law excludes the use of a
caveat to carry back the date of invention unless it "adequately
describe[s] the invention of the subsequent patent" the ade
quacy being moot. (61 Fed. Rep. 655, 671.) As the standard
legal text, Hopkins' The Law of Patents, says on page 272: "It
will be seen that the purpose of the section was to secure an
opportunity to have questions of priority between rival inven
tors determined before the issue of a patent."

The language of the law also limits the operation of the notice
to within a year of the date of filing of the caveat, so the ca-
veator could not expect to be notified of what had happened in
this line before the date of his filing, or after the end of a year.
Edison, incidentally, seems to have filed the three additional
Motion Picture Caveats to "keep alive" his original filing, since
the two caveats next ensuing ( of February 3, 1889, and May 20,
1889 see chaps. 3 and 4) sketched the originally described
mechanism as well as the improvement which was ostensibly
the specific occasion for the new caveat.

The language of court decisions on this matter is extensive
and interesting. This language makes it clear that an apparatus
described in a caveat was not to be regarded as having been
perfected. Indeed, there has been a nearly complete unanimity
upon this point: only one case being an exception. (For typical

4 Motion Picture Caveat I, October 8, 1888; Motion Picture Caveat II,
February 3, 1889; Motion Picture Caveat III, May 20, 1889; Motion Picture
Caveat IV, November 2 et seq. 1889. These dates are the dates upon which
they were written. The dates upon which they were officially filed are, re
spectively, October 17, 1888; March 25, 1889; August 5, 1889; and December
16, 1889. (Complainant's Record, pages 348-359 both inclusive, Equity 6928,
U. S. Circuit Court, Southern District of New York.)

5 In his argument and briefs on appeal to the United States Circuit Court
of Appeals of the Second Circuit, Parker Page, the American Mutoscope and
Biograph Company counsel, stated that the Edison attorney (who had referred
to this caveat in his argument) did not realize that the 1888 caveat had been
abandoned in the appeal to the same court in 1902. (Equity #8289 in U. S.
Circuit Court, Southern District of New York. )

6 Chicago: Callaghan and Company, 1911.

16

interpretations see 61 Fed, Rep. 655, 671; also 6 McLean 303,
Fed. Case 225; 1 Bond 212, Fed. Case 1247; 4 Fisher 170, Fed.
Case 7140; 12 Fed. Rep. Ill, 116; 1 McArthur 52, Fed. Case
2929. For the single exceptional case, see 1 Fisher 351, Fed.
Case 7411.)

In Elges vs. Miller, 46 O.G. 1514, the court said:

The filing of a caveat does not give the caveator the standing
of an applicant with respect to what is called "Constructive
Reduction to Practise." [The caveat] contains no declaration
or purpose on the part of the caveator that he will ever com
plete or finish his invention or give it to the world. The statute
does not contemplate that a caveator shall stand as an obstruc
tion to the diligent efforts of other inventors in the same field
of art.

In the same case, the court also said:

The statute authorizing the filing of a caveat does not intend to
confer upon the caveator any right as an inventor, nor to save
him from the effect of negligence or give him any advantage
over any other inventor who has conceived the invention and
prosecuted his application with diligence. It is not intended as
a stimulus to prod and drive him to perfect his invention, nor
is it intended to extend the time in any manner within which
he may complete the invention . . .

In Ex Parte Ward, 46 O.G. 1513, the court said: "[A patentee]
ought not be delayed in the issuance of his patent by a caveator
who is under no obligation to be diligent or to file his application
for patent." As we will see, Edison, in all his caveats, had in no
case achieved "Constructive Reduction to Practise," nor had he
in any sense achieved what the courts understood as a "perfec
tion" of his invention. Indeed, Caveat I describes a completely
inoperable apparatus, and nearly all its sections range variously
from the extremely unlikely on one hand to the fabulous and
impossible on the other. Without attending to the claim in the
first sentence that the instrument was "in such a form as to be
both cheap practical and convenient," which we cannot accept
as having been ever achieved with the apparatus described ( or
with any Edison motion picture apparatus ever made) we are
made quite incredulous in the third by: "In the first production
of the actual motions that is to say of a continuous Opera The
Instrument may be called . . /'

17

In June of this same year (see cliap. 1, note 18) Edison had
claimed a similar fanciful capacity for his phonograph. On June
3, the New York World said in the article cited above:

I have also a talking clock, which, instead of striking the hour,
speaks it. At dinner time a voice issues from the clock which
says 'dinner-time'; also 'One o'clock,' c Two o'clock, &c., as
the case may be. Another device which I am perfecting [a word
which came easily to Edison's lips] in connection with the clock
is that of a female face which I purpose to set in the face of
the clock. The lips of this figure will move at the hour, the head
will bow, and the fictitious lady will say, 'Good evening, ladies
and gentlemen, it is bedtime/ ... I can make an instrument
which is capable of being hidden away in a parlor and which
will record all the conversation carried on there. Imagine the
consternation of a loving young couple when all their billing
and cooing is reproduced by the mother of the young lady who
has placed the phonograph there for that purpose! To unnum
bered purposes can this instrument be put.

He had elsewhere claimed that Nicholas Nickleby could be
entirely reproduced on four cylinders 7 and that Ermine (a
musical which had a long run at the Casino in New York) could
also be "taken" in its entirety on his motion picture machine.

Two years later, in the process of a collaboration with George
Parson Lathrop (see Harpers Weekly article, June, 1891, etc.)
on a science fiction book he also proposed "Kinetoscope operas
with phono . . ." In the Century Magazine article above cited,
he had quieted somewhat in his predictions, but they were of
the same genre, and still claimed fantastic possibilities for his
apparatus: "I believe that in coming years . . . that grand
opera can be given at the Metropolitan Opera House at New
York . . . with artists and musicians long since dead." In the
Lathrop work, at least, he confines this idea to its then proper
role as fiction, but in the present caveat he proposes it as an
actual capacity of the cylinder apparatus which he describes.

7 Scientific American, December 31, 1887. As his contemporaries knew,
hyperbole was a facile metier with Edison. The East Orange Gazette spoke
(on June 14, 1888) of experimentations "on a flying machine . . . com
missioned by the Spanish government . . . revolving fans . . . power [from
wires to] an electric dynamo on earth." Edison himself referred (in a
letter of May 9, 1890) to his "very successful experiment ... of eliminating
uric acid from the finger joints by the use of lithia, forced in and out of the
finger by electrical osmose/' The Metropolitan Magazine of March, 1896,
spoke of Edison's belief that light reflected from the retina could be registered
on a photographic plate.

18

He describes an apparatus capable of starting and stopping
25 times per second and recording the actions occurring during
28 continuous minutes. This is achieved by the intermittent
movement of a ratchet and pawl 8 of such a size as to make any
thing more than a start and stop of more than two or three times
a second for a period of two or three seconds quite out of the
question. His apparatus would also have to have had a ratchet
containing 180 teeth on a circumference of about 4K inches,
arrested and released by a pawl with teeth correspondingly
small. This would enforce a distance of about %o of an inch
from point to point in the teeth of the ratchet gear, and a cor
responding size in the teeth of the pawl. At this small size, an
intermittent starting and stopping would have to occur 25 times
per second!

The Edison establishment customarily ordered its gears from
the outside, and on more than one occasion from the Boston
Gear Works, which figured prominently in the later Latham
apparatus. A contemporary catalogue of the Boston Gear Works
furnished to the writer through the kindness of Mr. E. P. Wil
liams, Internal Sales Manager of the concern lists all the
ratchet wheels offered by that company. For ratchets of this
diameter the greatest number of teeth on any Boston Gear
Works gear was eighty.

The point should also be made that the description in the
caveats need not have necessitated any except the most casual
effort, since many Edison developments had described mecha
nisms closely similar in more than one respect. For example, the
first Edison patent, U. S. #90646, showed an intermittent
movement with ratchet and pawl achieved by electromagnet-
ism. His stock printer also shows such a movement. ( See Dyer,
Martin, and Meadowcroft, page 822.) This later apparatus
shows a similar intermittent movement achieved by a ratchet
and pawl activated by a commutator wheel.

An example of the photographic experience of the writer of
this caveat may be seen in the following remarkable periphrasis.

8 This movement is said by Goodeve (The Elements of Mechanism, 1876)
to have been devised by Robert Hooke, Newton's bte noir, who died in 1703.
It is most commonly seen in clocks. Usher (A History of Mechanical Inven
tions. Boston: Beacon Press, 1959) ascribes it to Clement. Berthoud (Mesure
du temps, vol. 1 ) dates it in 1680. It consists o a circular wheel with usually
angular teeth; a pawl either imparts movement to it or prevents it from moving
backward.

19

The first line indicates that the writer either does not know the
difference between a negative and a positive or does not care
that the reader should think he knows the difference:

The collodion or other photographic film may be flowed over
it just as if it was an ordinary flat photo plate, a positive being
taken, but if it is desired to produce a negative series of photo
graphs a glass cylinder is used surface of the cylinder or shell
is flowed & the records taken. The cylinder or shell being
exceedingly thin say of mica is slipped over the regular cylinder
to be used in practice whose surface is sensitized and printed
from the negative by light in straight lines without reflection
from side surfaces. A positive may be taken & reproduced on
another cylinder just as one photograph may be taken from
another.

Does anyone doubt that if any sensitive surface is exposed to
light that anything else than a negative impression of the object
reflecting the light results? Yet Edison has said "A positive
being taken . . ." Even more fanciful is the line "The collodion,
may be flowed over it [i.e., the cylinder] just as if it was an
ordinary flat photo plate." Let this be proposed to anyone who
has ever flowed collodion over even a flat plate. And let those
who might suspect that a cylinder once "flowed" (which has
probably never been accomplished in the whole history of pho
tography) could be either exposed in the way described in this
caveat, or, once exposed, processed, read the following excerpt
from page 56 of Beaumont Newhall's The History of Photog
raphy (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1949) :

1. A piece of glass was placed in a vise and thoroughly cleaned
and polished.

2. Holding the cleaned glass by one corner, enough of the
viscous collodion (to which an iodide and often a bromide
had been added) was skillfully flowed over the surface to
form a smooth, even coating.

3. In the subdued orange light of the darkroom the coated
plate, while still tacky, was excited [italics in original], or
made light sensitive, by soaking it for about five minutes in
a bath of silver nitrate. When it had become creamy-yellow
it was taken out, drained and put, still wet [italics in
original] into a light-tight plate holder, or shield.

4. "Place the cap on the lens . . . ; let the eye of the sitter
be directed to a given point; withdraw the ground-glass
slide; insert the plate holder; raise or remove its slide; atten-

20

tion! One, two, three, four, five, six! (slowly and deliberately
pronounced in as many seconds, either aloud or in spirit).
Cover the lens. Down with the slide gently but with firm
ness. Withdraw the plate-holder and yourself into the
darkroom and shut the door."

5. The plate was removed from its holder and over its surface
a solution of pyrogaUic acid or ferrous sulphate was poured.
In a few seconds the image began to appear, increasing
rapidly in brilliance. When it was judged to be fully devel
oped, the plate was rinsed in clean water.

6. Hypo or potassium cyanide in solution was now poured over
the developed plate to dissolve the remaining unaltered sil
ver salts. The plate was then well washed under running
water.

7. Over a gentle flame the fixed plate, held between thumb
and forefinger, was rapidly moved until dry; while still warm
it was varnished.

Newhall adds: "The process required experience and skill of
hand; a mistake in any one operation spelled failure. The pho
tographer was chained to his darkroom, for all these operations
had to be done rapidly, before the collodion dried or else excess
silver nitrate would crystallize out and spoil the image . . ."
The impossibility of Edison's proposal is specifically stated by
Vogel in Anthony's Photographic Bulletin of September 26,
1891 : "When collodion photography with glass plates came into
use the production of cylindrical plates [of even only a half
circle] was not possible" [Italics mine.]

If anyone believes that Edison's Caveat I was written by a
man who was experienced in photography (or who cared to
convey that impression) let him also read the sentence next
following the paragraph quoted above: "The permanent cylin
der may even be covered with a shell and a thin flat film or
transparent tissue sensitized by wrapped around it which after
being filled with images . . /' Even the Dyer and Seely transla
tion of this line leaves confusion: "The permanent cylinder may
be covered with a shell and a thin flat film or transparent sensi
tized tissue wrapped around it, and this after being filled with
images . . ."

Important also, as we will show later (see pp. 71-73), was
what "a thin flat film" could have been on October 8, 1888. Such
an item could not have been so manipulated at this date, since
a "film" in 1888 even among professional photographers meant

21

only the emulsion which formed the coating of a base. The
Eastman "stripping film" is a case in point.

In spite of this, Josephson (page 387) has called Edison a
man with "instinctive knowledge and discernment [of photo
graphic] materials." He also says, in spite of the careful rates
described here, that these were "still to be determined" late in
1889.

The start-and-stop mechanism of this caveat could not over
come the inertia of a metal cylinder 9" long and 3" in diameter;
it could not, for that matter, even overcome its own inertia. To
be made operable, the diameter of the cylinder would have to
be considerably increased, the number of teeth considerably re
duced, the driving mechanism considerably modified, and the
rate of taking considerably slowed up: all of which is exactly
what happened later, when Dickson produced the "Monkey-
shines" pictures on such a cylinder. ( See chap. 5. )

In addition to all this, no fair-minded man who was also
familiar with shop practice would concede that such parts as
these could have been constructed. This caveat, like others
which where to come after, reveals a man who knew nothing
about and had done nothing with either motion pictures or
photography of any kind whatever. He was now merely using
his wide general knowledge of mechanics and electricity to
circumscribe, wherever possible, these fields from others. As
Dr. Alfred Goldsmith 9 in a letter to me said, ". . . the equip
ment would have no practical significance . . . would have
produced only very small, low-detail, non-projectable pictures
. . . was inevitably of no significance in the actual develop
ment of the motion-picture art."

This caveat, however, although having within itself proof
that no motion picture work had been done and that no mo
tion picture work could be done unless there were a consider
able advance in methods therefor, is nevertheless a sure indica
tion that Dickson was beginning to think about the matter. We
have no indication that he did anything about it until he went
to New York on November 28 to "get all ready for the Da-
guerrotype Exp." (see page 28).

e Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering at City College of New York,
past-president of the Institute of Radio Engineers, past-president of the So
ciety of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, Fellow of the American
Physical Society, Fellow of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers.

22

3 The First Motion
Picture Work

THE FALL AND WINTER OF 1888-1889 WITNESSED NOTHING WHICH

can be described as extensive work on motion pictures. The
work which Dickson himself later described as having been
antecedent to his motion picture work appears to have been
covered in the following lines from his 1933 article:

Before making the drum I made a small micro-camera, using
various objectives or lenses taken from one of my microscopes
to produce pin-head photos. [Edison's idea had been to cover
the drum "with pin-point micro-photographs which of course
must synchronize with the phonograph record." Ibid.] In this
micro-camera I tried Daguerre's process on highly polished bits
of silver and developed in the usual way. The subject I used
was a lantern slide of Landseer's stag for all these comparative
single still pictures.

The time of exposure was about three-quarters of a minute.
Of course, this method was soon abandoned. Next I tried silver
nitrate on wet collodion, using an exposure of 10 seconds,
which was finally shortened to 5 seconds . . .

Dickson, recalling his motion picture work after forty-five
years, has elided much of it into extraneous material. The
work he described here for the Journal of the Society of Motion
Picture Engineers in 1933 included also his microphotographic
work, which very much concerned Dickson, Edison, and Edi
son's attorneys at this time. He may also very well be confusing
the "Magic Lantern Experiment," which was begun at this time,
and which was spuriously used in the American Mutoscope
suit (Equity 6928, U. S. Circuit Court, S.D.N.Y.) although in
the private notes of the attorneys the magic lantern work and
the kinetoscope work were carefully distinguished. In any case,
there can be no question that only the viewing of photographs
is spoken of here: the %oo-second exposure necessary for mo
tion photography is far in the future. And considerably more

23

than one such exposure (to say the least) is needed to qualify
for motion picture camera invention.

In the first place, wanting to produce "pin-head photos/' l
Dickson would probably have antedated the arrival of the
elaborate Zeiss microphotographic outfit, since he describes
nothing here which could not have been accomplished with
greater smoothness on this later apparatus. This outfit was not
in working order at the Edison laboratory until late in 1889.

Both Dickson and Edison were proud of this apparatus. It
was first ordered from the importer James Queen and Com
pany on September 21, 1887. (Document files "Correspondence
West Orange Laboratory Equipment, 1887.") Fifteen months
later, on December 22, 1888, Queen and Company said that the
photomicrographic apparatus would be finished "in the course
of a fortnight." (Ibid., "Motion Pictures, 1888" although im
properly filed there. ) On February 21, 1889, Edison wrote sar
castically: "When may I expect to receive the micro photo outfit
of Zeiss ordered from you a long time ago? before 1890?"
(Letter book 1717, 1/30/89-4/8/89, page 326.) By March 18,
the apparatus had arrived but was in bad condition; Dickson
claimed that the wooden elements were green and this had
caused warping. Dickson told Tate that Queen and Company
"shd make some reduction in bill." (Document files "Motion
Pictures, 1889" improperly filed.) Queen and Company re
plied on May 30 that a 5 per cent reduction was all right
( ibid. ) . It was then decided to make repairs on the apparatus
at the laboratory and send Queen and Company the bill for
these repairs (ibid. ) . By June 27, these repairs had not yet been
completed (letter book E1717, 6/21/89-8/3/89). Apparently
they had not been made up to the time Edison went to Paris,
but Dickson suggests that the apparatus was ready for business
by the time Edison returned. (Edison archives, Dickson letter
to Charles Edison, March 8, 1933. See also Eder, Jahrbuch fur
Photographic, 1889, pp. 260, 261.)

Laboratory receipts of collodion at this time are perhaps in
conclusive, since this substance was used regularly in Dickson's
work as laboratory photographer as well as for many other
laboratory purposes. It may be fair, however, to assume that the
distinction made in the receiving book for October 10 of that

1 In The Century Magazine article, June, 1894, he says "pin-point."

24

year suggests that previous shipments of collodion had not been
for photographic purposes:

8 Ibs. Collodion 4 Ibs. negative [collodion]

A similar distinction was made in describing the shipment re
ceived on October 17.

( It is interesting to note, incidentally, that on September 15,
1888, 10 yards of "Blue Process Paper" were received at the
laboratory, with the inference that this new photographic work
there is no record of any previous such shipment must also
have added to Dickson's later confusion in separating the still
and motion photography work. We know that this blueprint
paper was not just something that was to remain "on hand,"
since immediately after he got this paper he went to work on

it. 2 )

On October 11, a single slide was received from McAllister.
We know that McAllister was the largest slide manufacturer
and distributor in America, and that he made and distributed
a 3M" x 4" glass slide of Landseer's famous "Stag" under the
name "Monarch of the Glen." 3 Although the Edison laboratory
used hundreds of slides in these years, the receipt books show
none previous to this date, and none possibly answering this
description until January 15, 1889. 4 On this latter date, however,
582 views were received from McAllister, including several
from the Louvre. The Landseer may well have been among
these 582, though it was not in the Louvre in 1889, or appar
ently at any other time. This very slide is now in the West
Orange laboratory, where it is accession #E175-1. In any case,
we apparently have, in October 11, a first possible date for the
Landseer work, although the January shipment is much more
likely. As we will see, experimentation with it did not begin
until six weeks later. (See page 28.)

October 19 records the receipt of arc light carbons the first
I have found, suggesting again that the Magic Lantern Experi-

2 Edison archives document file "Phonograph Sketches and Notes 1888."

3 McAllister catalogue in the Bella C. Landauer Collection, New- York His
torical Society.

4 On December 11, 1888, the Edison archives receiving book records:

100, 13, 102, 2, & 2 micro, objects; epigram; 5 micrometers; slide Lord's
Prayer in 1/17000 of an inch. McAllister

and no other entry for this time. None of these could have been the Landseer.

25

merit was about to get under way. We have seen that indeed it
was, since the first charge to this account was made the next
month. On November 9, the first receipts I have found of cal
cium gas were recorded, 5 and on November 22 a magic lantern
"sheet" was received. 6 On December 15, further tanks of gas
were received. 7 These shipments of illuminating gas continued
almost throughout the years Dickson was at the laboratory.

On December 8 we have a note which may suggest the first
laboratory experimentation with celluloid: 8

1 lb Gum [sic] cotton . . . Chas. Cooper & Co.
But on December 24, et seq., we have the following: 9

1 gal amyl acetate
1 lb. soluble cotton

which makes it possible for us to believe that the gun cotton
received on December 8 was unsatisfactory or that more was
wanted.

There is no evidence, however, that this celluloid was used
for photographic work. More likely, it was used for the celluloid
eartubes with which phonographs were sometimes fitted. That
there had been no celluloid of any kind at the laboratory until
this time is suggested by the fact that the next March the Cel
luloid Varnish Company of Newark wrote in regard to Edison's
touted claim to have "every known substance," saying that they
did not see celluloid on the list. Edison's reply was a request for
information as to prices, etc., suggesting that up to the next
March, at least, ready-made celluloid was not at the laboratory.

The Celluloid Varnish Company was associated with the

5 Page 230, Edison archives receiving book entry for this date.

6 Page 241, Edison archives receiving book entry for this date. See also page
23. The point must be made, however, that all expenses for the regular
lectures that were held at the laboratory were actually charged to this magic
lantern "experiment." Which is another case of obscuring regular operating
expenses under an "experiment" camouflage. (See page 32 et seq.}

7 Page 259, Edison archives receiving book entry for this date:

one cylinder each. Hy. [drogen] & Ox [ygen]

8 Page 252, Edison archives receiving book entry for this date.

9 Page 263, receiving book entry for this date. Celluloid is made principally
of soluble gun-cotton and camphor. The addition of amyl acetate and fusel
oil was considered a patentable distinction by the patent office when they
awarded Reichenbach, Eastman's chemist, his U. S. #417202. The Scientific
American of January 29, 1887, contains an interesting account of the American
Celluloid Company.

26

Celluloid Manufacturing Company, and told Edison that tliey
could supply celluloid only %oo of an inch in thickness.

Irrelevant to the matter described by Dickson as having been
his pre-drum motion picture work, but much more important
to our history is the notice of the receipt on November 15, 1888,
of

Plates of Animal Locomotion. Photo Gravure Co.

The Photo Gravure Company was the agency for Muybridge's
photos; 10 Edison had ordered these and had asked Muybridge
to make the selection for him. 11 The account books record the
payment of $100 but, significantly, do not apply this cost to
any established account, but simply to "Edward Muybridge." 12
When these plates came, they were greeted with much enthu
siasm. They were taken from their folder and put up in the li
brary for easy viewing. They remained thus conspicuously dis
played for some time. There appears to be little question that
they were significant in initiating motion picture work at the
Edison laboratory.

W. S. Mallory, an Edison associate in those days, wrote on
February 1, 1939, that:

I have a distinct recollection that in the spring of 1889 someone
sent Mr. Edison a set of photographs of running horses which
were taken by Meyerbridge [sic]. The pictures were mounted
on boards and set up in the library for Mr. Edison's inspection
and they were there for some months. It was these pictures
which again started him working on the development of the
moving picture machine . . .

Mallory is in error here about the date, as we have seen, but it
is impossible not to believe that these photos were treated in
the manner described. (See also W. J. Hammer's remarks
quoted by George E. Nitzsche in chapter 11.) Ninety of these

10 And also the printer, according to the brochure published in connection
with their distribution. (Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. )

11 On May 12, Muybridge sent Edison a catalogue of the "Animal Locomo
tion" plates on which Edison noted

Tell him to make the selection for me. E.

(Edison archives document file "Motion Pictures, 1888.")

^Edison archives "Journal/No. 5/Laboratory/T. A. Edison/ Orange, N. J."
Page 132.

27

plates are still in the library at the West Orange Laboratory. 13
Equally interesting, and distinctively related to what Dickson
describes above as work preliminary to the kinetoscope, is
the receipt book entry for November 23 : 14

Hand Book Daguerrotype. Scovill Mfg. Co.

This entry is conclusive when taken in connection with an in-
tralaboratory note in Dickson's hand dated November 27, 1888,
which I found in the ore-milling files at the Edison laboratory:
"Having waited unnecessarily long for the silver plates I
thought it the best plan to go over first thing Wed. morning
[it was now Tuesday] to NY & see what I could get all ready
for the Daguerrotype Exp. hoping this may meet with your
approval, I remain, etc." If there was any thought that the re
ceipt of a daguerreotype handbook on November 23, did not
necessarily indicate that daguerreotype work had not been done
before, the note by Dickson on November 27 establishes this
beyond doubt. Here we have also reference to silver used in
photography, as it commonly was in daguerreotype work. Surely
we have here the process described above: "In this micro-
camera I tried Daguerre's process on highly polished bits of
silver . . . Landseer's stag . . ."

So far as my work has shown, this trip to New York on
November 28, 1888, is the first actual work at the Edison labora
tory on what we can fairly call motion pictures. The Muybridge
plates had lately arrived, and were the object of much admira
tion. A daguerreotype handbook was soon ordered and on No
vember 28 plans were undertaken.

On the same morning that Dickson went to New York to "get
all ready for the Daguerrotype Exp.," Muybridge wrote Edison
a letter saying that he had sent his "animal locomotion" plates
to Orange "about two weeks ago." Obviously the laboratory
had written to ask why they had not come and Muybridge was
replying after the arrival of the plates had made such an inquiry
no longer pertinent. Again we see the eagerness and interest
with which these photos were regarded.

(Regularly and throughout all this period various items con
cerning photographic work were appearing in public print, and

13 Dewey number 591.47M. The Mallory letter is in a miscellaneous letter
file on the second floor of the library.

14 Page 242, Edison archives receiving book entry for this date.

28

many of them had a bearing on the work that Dickson was
doing. But since this literature is so extensive I will refer to it
here only insofar as it seems to have been directly influential
on the Edison laboratory work. The reader is invited to read
Appendix D for a resume of such work. )

On February 3, 1889, Edison wrote his Motion Picture Caveat
II ( see Appendix B ) . This was a multisubject caveat, and ad
heres to an Edison practice later described by himself in testi
mony in the case cited above, on page 105 of the Complainant's
Record:

Q. [By Richard Dyer, Edison's attorney.] Has the date of the

caveat any immediate relation to the date when you made

the experiments . . . ?
A. No. My habit was to collect a great number of notes from

time to time, and when I got enough of them I put them in

the form of a caveat.

This particular caveat is claimed to have been partly conceived
on January 11, 1889. In the infringement suit heretofore re
ferred to, six small sketches on as many pages bearing the
familiar "From the Laboratory of Thomas A. Edison" letter
head, were presented (Complainant's Record; presented, page
107, printed on pages 410-415). These sketches represent ele
ments of the cylinder machine described in Motion Picture
Caveat I (see page 19), but do not illustrate that part of the
apparatus which distinguishes Caveat I from Caveat II. All
these sketches are signed:

Kinetoscope
Jany 11 1889
TAE
J. F. Ott

The "J. F. Ott" is John F. Ott, Fred Ott's older brother and for
a long time foreman of the precision room at the laboratory.

The character of these signatures make it impossible, in my
opinion, to believe that they were made on the day on which
the sketches themselves were made. Even a cursory examina
tion of the Edison notebooks will turn up many such instances,
suggesting strongly that the dating was either part of an honest
recall, or a part of an effort designed to achieve an end not
supported by the facts. A case in point is one page which is

29

dated October 5, 1889 upon which date Edison was still on
the high seas one day out of New York on his way back from
Paris. 15 It is possible to think that he had the notebook with
him, but it is much easier to believe especially when one has
the notebook before him and notices the differences in pencil,
strength of marking, illogical location on page, etc. that this
date, like many others, was entered at a time considerably later
than the time which was claimed for it. As we shall see later,
much of the testimony at this trial can be shown to have derived
from the "incorrect" memory or claims of men with important
axes to grind, namely, establishing priority to the Friese-
Greene disclosure on February 28, 1890.

The only distinctive change in the apparatus from that de
scribed in Motion Picture Caveat I, and now described in Mo
tion Picture Caveat II, is that improvement which was proposed
to prevent the pictures from being thrown out of focus by the
roundness of the surface of the cylinder. This difficulty was de
scribed by Dickson more than once; for example, in the Century
Magazine article of June, 1894, he wrote: "The pictures were
then taken spirally to the number of two hundred or so, but
were limited in size, owing to the rotundity of surface . . "
and in the 1933 article he repeated that "These pictures, when
viewed through a low-power microscope, were fairly good in
spite of the curvature of the drum. A disk was tried next, to
avoid the difficulty arising from the curved drum surface . . ."
In neither case, however, does Dickson refer to the expedient
described in Motion Picture Caveat II.

On page 182 of Edison's notebook (see page 29) which may
be seen at the Edison museum in West Orange alongside the
Dickson notebook hereinafter referred to, a sketch headed also

Kinetoscope
Jay 11 89

but neither signed by Edison nor countersigned by John Ott
shows an arc of a cylinder containing several flattened surfaces.
It is accompanied by the following notes : "If % photo taken on
3 inch cylinder Then there should be 72 paralell [sic] flattened
places longitudinally along cylinder so that all parts of photo

15 This date may be seen on pages 47 and 55 of the Edison notebook at
present in the museum of the Edison laboratory in West Orange. This notebook
is catalogued there as N-870902.

30

be in focus . . . glass strip could be pasted along side each
other but this is perhaps unnecessary a varnish might be used
collodion etc enamel etc."

The intermittent movement of this cylinder, like that de
scribed in Motion Picture Caveat I, would again have to be
accomplished by the movement of a ratchet gear containing
over 180 angular teeth evenly spaced along a periphery of
approximately 4% inches.

Everywhere these photo-cylinders are referred to as being the
same size as those used for the phonograph work. Such cylin
ders were introduced in evidence in the infringement case, and
referred to in the attorneys' private notes (see page 4) as
similar in size to the phonograph cylinders. In the Edison note
above he calls them "3 inch" cylinders. Assuming 3-inch cylin
ders, and assuming a ratchet diameter of half this ( as is shown
in all the sketches), a circumference for such a ratchet would
be four and a half inches. Acting upon this ratchet there again
would have to be (as in the first caveat) a pawl with arms com
ing to points sufficiently small to enter such a ratchet as above,
and made of such a substance as would not batter out of shape
while being actuated at the rate of 15 to 20 times per second:
surely an impossible condition. The technical difficulties attend
ant upon cutting and pasting glass strips %2 inch wide and 9
inches long firmly and with mathematical precision upon the
face of a cylinder are also prohibitive.

We may fairly assume that between November 28, 1888, and
the days soon following February 3, 1889, when this second
caveat was begun, the motion picture cylinder work had
reached the point where Dickson had discovered, by actual
work, that the photographs taken on a cylinder surface needed
to have their sharpness improved. He communicated this need
to Edison, and Edison, in this caveat, proposed an altogether
impracticable solution. Only a very slight amount of work
would have been necessary to meet this impasse possibly just
the right amount of work to explain the opening of the account
late in January, 1889, and the small charge made to it. There
is no indication, however, that these photographs were either
rapidly taken or taken with a sufficiently short exposure to
classify as "motion pictures."

31

4 The First Advance

WITH FEBRUARY, 1889, A SERIES OF CHARGES TO THE KINETOSCOPE

account began which was to continue uninterruptedly for six
teen months. 1 1 believe it probable, however, for reasons I will
show, that little work was done on the kinetoscope during most
of this period, and that the account was largely or only a cover
for unknown charges possibly laboratory overhead.

To begin with, in the infringement case with the American
Mutoscope Company, and in testimony taken at the laboratory
on February 3, 1900, John F. Randolph, Edison's bookkeeper
submitted "the original time sheets from which the schedules
put in evidence . . . were prepared." These time sheets
showed, for the month of February, a total of $33,73 spent on
labor for the kinetoscope account, and a total of 116% hours
(at an average wage of about 28 cents an hour) by six men: a
pattern maker, a blacksmith, a blacksmith's helper, and three
machinists. 2 For March, this total was 77.43, with 284% hours
spent (an average wage of 27 ( per hour) by six men; five ma
chinists and a pattern maker. In April, a total of 39.47 with 148
hours (with an average wage of 26$) by one man only, a ma
chinist. In May, a total of 52.68 is shown covering 197% hours by
three men: a machinist, a blacksmith, and a blacksmith's helper, 3

We have then, for February, March, April, and May, total

'The charge for February was $103.52; March, $226.94; April, $126.87;
May, $166.61; June, $142.39; July, $921.27; August, $813.55; September,
$463.33; October, $470.34; November, $308.70; December, $241.34; January,
$248.32; February, $150.48; March, $314.93; April, 402.34; and May, $303.69
(Edison archives "General Ledger No. 5 Jan/8S-June/90," pages 806 and 560).

2 These sheets are presented to the defendant's counsel on page 163 of
Complainant's Record, Equity number 6928, U. S. Circuit Court, Southern
District of New York, and are printed on pages 360, 361, and 362 of this
record. I have also examined the originals: with very minor exceptions, they
correspond to the printed record.

3 Since the week ended, for Edison laboratory accounting purposes, on
Thursdays, it has been difficult to accord to the weeks including month ends
and beginnings the exactly proper amounts of these charges since the Ran
dolph time sheets give only weekly totals. But since, on a monthly basis, these
differences do not exceed more than a few days, I do not consider this dif
ference significant.

32

time charges of $33.73, $77.43, $39.47, and $52.68, respectively.
And during these four months, 116%, 284%, 148, and 197%
hours. (I disregard materials charges for the sake of this demon
stration, because in answer to a later question, Randolph said
that up to January 1, 1890, in a total of $3,984.86, spent on this
account, only $57.70 was for material in other words, only
about one-seventieth. )

Yet the Edison account books themselves show that the
charges to the kinetoscope account for these months were re
spectively, $103.52, $226.94, $126.87, and $166.61. 4 The differ
ences, then, between what were actually charges to the kineto
scope account and the amount which we can explain with pay
roll costs, were: $69.79, $149.51, $87.40, and $113.93. In each
case these figures represent approximately two-thirds of the
total actually charged, with the inescapable conclusion that
two-thirds of what was charged to the kinetoscope account in
these four months was not kinetoscope work. This discrepancy
cannot be explained by the suggestion that Edison himself did
not fill time sheets but nevertheless had his time charged to
this account, because during the months of August and Septem
ber, 1889, when we know he was in Europe, the same wide
disparity between what was actually spent and what was
charged continues.

When we add to this the fact that none of the ten men who
are shown on these time sheets as having been engaged in this
work prior to Dickson's coming into it in the week ending June
27, 1889, was called as a witness (in spite of the fact that,
according to the private legal file above noted, at least one the
draftsman, who dated his work in 1890 lived no farther away
than the Orange Y.M.C.A.), we are inclined to feel even more
strongly that little work was done during this time. The pre
cision room book item (see page 34) is the only proof we have
that any work was done. Since Edison was basing a large part
of his case on Dickson's claim to have projected motion pictures
for him on his return from Paris in October, 1889; and since this
projection would have necessitated a considerable amount of
work by Dickson before this time even, as I will show, before
Edison went to Paris; and since Dickson was a member of
the defendant's firm and the defendant's lawyers could scarcely

4 In the ledger cited in note 32, page 1.

33

have attacked this Dickson claim without prejudicing their case
(even if they had not believed that he had done all this work
when he said he did, before and during Edison's trip to Paris )
all parties refrained from disputing Dickson's work on the
kinetoscope at this time.

In addition, when we consider the fact that an exhaustive
study of everyone's claims in this cylinder work up to the work
ending June 27, 1889, turns up a grand total of only a few cylin
ders; and when we place these products alongside the alleged
fact that the following hours were spent on the construction of
these few devices:

1. pattern maker East 15% hours

2. pattern maker Ludecke 2 hours

3. blacksmith Hep worth 6 hours

4. blacksmith's helper Gilmore 6 hours

5. machinist Grabicsy 59 hours

6. machinist Wheelwright 50 hours

7. machinist Harburger 14 hours

8. machinist Riebe 38 hours

9. machinist Morlet 5 hours
10. machinist Neubert 550% hours

with this latter working full time for a full nine weeks with no
one else working on the experiment and all this time spent
without a single charge -for an experimenter or a draftsman
to tell the machinist what to machine, we are sure that at least
a large part of the work claimed was spurious.

In addition to the inferences made on page 23ff. from Dick-
son's memory and the inference made from the description of
the flattened surfaces in the second caveat, there are only two
items in all the tens of thousands of documents in the Edison
archives which establish that any work at all was done at this
time on motion pictures excluding, of course, the inconclusive
accounting records. One of these is a note in Edison's hand
which, although itself undated, appears to accompany pages
dated August 1, 1889. This is a memo for John Ott: "Help
Dixon on -pfe- [change in original: "phonograph" was begun]
Kinetoscope,"

The second item is from John Ott's Precision Room notebook
dated January 31, 1889 (Edison laboratory #E190-0-2.12) for
"Kinetoscope 262." The "262" is a shop order number. This date

34

coincides with the first charge to the kinetoscope account (see
page 32) and appears to establish that something was done
at this time. This book contains no other such entry, however,
until the next year. If there had been other kinetoscope work
done at the laboratory, I do not understand how it could have
failed to be noted in this book. Since it was not noted, how can
the historian believe that such work was done? 5

This doubt is strengthened by a contradiction in the legal file
mentioned on page 4. Item 2.10 of this file attributes a reflec
tor bought on voucher #853 in August, 1889, to the kineto
scope account, yet item 2.11 in a group of three items two of
which are obviously extraneous to kinetoscope work, 6 does not
identify this reflector with such work. This leaves us with the
clear impression that the attorneys, scraping the bottom of the
accounts' barrel to find documentary proof of their pre-Friese-
Greene thesis, seized upon this reflector as a possible kineto
scope purchase. What an 8" reflector could have been used for
in the cylinder work is obscure, and such an item would fit into
more than one other laboratory experiment. If the attorneys
were trying to ascribe it to the peep-hole kinetoscope, then why
did they not produce vouchers for other peep-hole parts, such
as the sprocket wheels and the spools for the spool-band
which would have had to have been ordered for this device?
Moreover, the appropriate receiving book makes no mention of
this reflector, suggesting strongly that it was part of a shipment
for another laboratory experiment.

It may be further stated that unless the Edison attorneys had
clear proof that Dickson did spend the weeks beginning at this
time on the kinetoscope work, they were laying themselves open
to possible proof by Dickson himself that this date was too early

5 In all their writing about the "Edison" motion picture invention the Edison
junto have consistently failed to note the fact that this precision room book,
(E 190-0-212) covering the whole period from February, 1889, when the first
kinetoscope charge is noted, to 1900, and having a complete record of all
shop orders from #1 to #1242, makes only two additional kinetoscope nota
tions in all our history up to October, 1892: (1) about October, 1890, "Experi
ment on Kinetoscope 462," and (2) about June 1, 1892, "Making New Model
for Kinetoscope Nickle in slot. 626."

6 "Voucher 73 Jan 902 Tin cylinders 7% x 24" and "Voucher 372 Apr.
90 -13 pieces dipped/36 punchings as sample/E. P. Wks. [Edison Phonograph
Works] 2 cylinders japanned Jan 9/90." The reference to the Edison Phono
graph Works proves that the "Jan 90" cylinders were bought for the pho
nograph work.

35

( he was always accused of taking his notes away with him ) and
that he did not do any work until after Edison had left for Paris
thus prejudicing Edison's own case for invention but still
making reasonable Dickson's claim for a projection on Edison's
return.

Meanwhile, on May 20, Edison had written his Motion Pic
ture Caveat III, with specifications as fanciful as either of the
two before: "A reflector X throws the light of the spark [from a
Ley den jar!] on the moving object AA' . . ." (AA' being the
object to be photographed). He proposed to take these photo
graphs at the rate of 15 per second on a sensitive surface. As one
authority has said optimistically, "the chances are about a mil
lion to one." No such light is conceivable from a Leyden jar,
which, although the power of its discharge depends upon the
power of its charge, must nevertheless be of a size concomitant
with the power of its action. A Leyden jar of the capacity
needed here would be a monstrous object utterly beyond any
thing in the history of physics.

Edison, as though feeling that this was too bald an exaggera
tion even for a man noted for his exaggeration, goes on to say
that an intermittent sunlight or arc light might be created by
the use of a shutter. His sketches, however, show an object some
feet away from the light source being photographed by
means of the few candles of Leyden jar spark. And this in a day
when only the approximately hundred billion quintillion can
dles of the sun itself would suffice to produce images on such
photographic materials as were then available. 7

Edison's closing remarks reach new heights of fancy. He pro
poses that this same spark should be inserted within a cylinder
of small diameter, be intermittently produced, directed through
the glass of a transparent cylinder, through negatives on the
surface of the drum, through a lens, and onto a screen! 8 To be
gin with, any such light as would achieve this projection would

7 This estimate of the sun's candle power is by C. E. Kenneth Mees, and was
made at a meeting of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, ( Transactions,
SMPE, September, 1925.)

8 It will be seen (see pages 114, 189) that negatives were referred to else
where, when such a reference could only mean a lack of empirical knowledge
or, at best, the failure to achieve the positives which would be appropriate,

36

then, as now, instantly melt the glass of the carrier itself not
to mention the film.

The two sketches in this caveat are dated (in the manner to
which Edison is accustomed cf. page 29) June 19 a full
month after they could possibly have been made since the
text, dated May 20, refers explicitly and specifically to these
sketches. Although this June 19 date appears to have been
scratched out on the second of these two sketches, it remains on
the first. It also shows us the extreme carelessness with which
these dates were set down, and shows Edison's unscrupulousness
in entering them, since legal action depended upon them. The
impression that Equity 6928 was perfunctorily prepared is re
inforced. This caveat, incidentally, although written on May 20,
was not filed until August 5. We may thus presume that it was
felt by both Edison and his attorneys to represent his latest pre-
Paris thinking in the matter of motion pictures. "Unlike Caveat
II, it contains no indication that the impasse reached when the
cylinder photographs were thrown out of focus in enlargement
had been surmounted.

During these months and until the end of June Dickson was
much engaged with ore-milling and, it bears repeating, could
take only spare time for anything else, even his work as the
official laboratory photographer. 9 It is interesting to note, also,
in connection with Dickson's notes re the use of celluloid (see
page 71) that on May 16 the Zylonite Company ("zylonite"
or "xylonite" was an early equivalent for celluloid 10 ) offered
celluloid to the laboratory, and on May 7, Seed and Company
had also announced a celluloid base for positives. (Photo
graphic Beacon, May, 1889. ) On June 3, the Zylonite Company,
having apparently been written for information concerning
their celluloid, told Dickson that if he wanted "to bend into any
shape the material left" (here we have proof that celluloid was

9 See, for example, E190-0.282-2.14; letters of February 9, February 19,
February 21, March 4, March 6, March 23, April 22, May 22, May 24. (Letter
book E1717, 1/30/89-4/8/89, page 148.) See also document files "Ore-Milling
1889 General"; document files "Laboratory West Orange W. K. L. Dickson."

10 See Scientific American for January 29, 1887, page 69. Also Webster's
International Dictionary, 1890 edition: "Xylonite: see Zylonite," "Zylonite:
celluloid." Although tins definition cannot be found in the current edition of
Webster's, it was still being given as late as 1926.

37

at the laboratory as of June 3, 1889) to let them know and they
would tell him how. 11

On May 30 the Phonograph Works had asked the Eastman
Dry Plate Company for quotations on a Kodak camera and a
"reloading camera." Carl W. Ackerman ( George Eastman. New
York: Houghton Mifflin, 1930) says on page 64 that Edison had
purchased such a camera "in the summer of 1889" which he
assumes only from the fact that Edison had asked for a quota
tion on this camera on May 30. We know from the receiving
book that no such camera was received until November 23.

Wilson's Photographic Magazine for June noted that East
man had "succeeded in making" transparent flexible film
although no one saw any of it until later and on June 8 the
Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company sent out the announce
ment of its new film to the trade press. I will show in chapter 7
what happened to it.

5 The Carbutt Film

ANY DISCUSSION OF EASTMANS CELLULOID-BASED FILM IS, HOW-

ever interesting (see chap. 7), only academic so far as the Dick-
son motion picture work of these months is concerned. The in
fluence of the Eastman film on this work was nonexistent until
1891, but the celluloid-based film developed by John Carbutt
of Philadelphia already on the market for some months by
June, 1889 had an influence from the cylinder days in 1890.
John Carbutt was a well-known photographic materials man
ufacturer whose "Keystone" plates were widely used through
out the world. 1 He deserves a prominent place in the history of
American photography and in the story of the American motion
picture. Since he supplied Dickson with the film means to
develop his first cameras, his place, often usurped by Eastman

11 Edison archives document files "Laboratory quotes for equipment, 1889."
1 For biographical facts on Carbutt see Journal of the Franklin Institute,
December, 1905, page 461; Photominiature, volume 4, page 9; Philadelphia
Photographer, page 40, volume 7; ibid., page 437, volume 9. Also an interest
ing account of Carbutt's western adventures beginning on page 277 of Taft,
Photography and the American Scene. New York: Macmillan, 1942.

38

through the deplorable tendency to ascribe famous contribu
tions to famous people, is in front of any other film supplier. 3

Following the tremendous desire of all photographers and
especially amateurs, whose work so often took them out of
the studio for a lighter, more portable film carrier, Carbutt's
scientific and manufacturing resources were brought to bear
upon the problem, and on November 7, 1888, he announced his
celluloid-based film to the Photographic Society of Philadel
phia, of which he was a permanent member. 3 By November 12
he was able to write, in a paper read to the Franklin Institute on
November 21: (Photographic Times, Dec. 7, 1888)

The substance I have the honor to bring to your notice tonight
is this sheet celluloid, manufactured by the Celluloid Manu
facturing Company.

It is some three or four years since I first examined into this
material, but the manufacturers had not then perfected the
finish of it to render it available, and it is only during this year
that it has been produced in uniform thickness and finish, and
I am now using at my factory large quantities of sheet cellu
loid % 00 of an inch in thickness, coated with the same emulsion
as used on glass, forming flexible negative films, the most com
plete and perfect substitute for glass I believe yet discovered on
which to make negatives and positives, and without a single
objection belonging to the substances previously enumerated.

Its weight, as compared with glass, is as follows: Twenty-
four 5x8 flexible films weigh seven and one-half ounces,
while twenty-four glass dry plates weigh from 110 to 120
ounces, and its great merit does not alone lay [sic] in its light
ness, toughness and flexibility, but in that its treatment in de
velopment, etc., is precisely that of a glass plate there is
absolutely no after-process required . . . owing to its thinness,
can be printed from the reverse side . . .

I have here several negatives made on the films and prints
from them, that members can examine at close of meeting.

I will now show on the screen lantern transparencies from
film negatives, both contact and reduced in the camera.

2 As Eder has pointed out (page 786), the word "film" originated in^the
Anglo-Saxon word "filmen," i.e., "the scum which forms on boiled milk." As
noted in Appendix D, Edison did not coin this word. Mrs. Dickson's remark,
reported in her husband's New York Times obituary on October 3, 1935, that
Dickson ". . . Took his first motion picture film to Mr. Edison, who observed
that it was 'filmy/ according to his widow, and from that remark the name
took rise" discredits Dickson, Mrs. Dickson, and the New York Times.

3 The original handwritten minutes of the society, now in the collection of
the Ajnerican Museum of Photography in Philadelphia, list Carbutt as a
member.

39

As Carbutt says, his celluloid was produced by the Celluloid
Manufacturing Company. It is also pertinent to note that Car-
butt was not the first to use celluloid as an emulsion base in
the United States: the Reverend Hannibal Goodwin had ap
plied for a patent on this process the previous year (U. S.
#610861, application #236780) and was even now beginning
his long trials in the Patent Office.

Because his was a relatively small firm with little attention
given to the sort of publicity which later established the East
man Company's reputation of having invented celluloid-based
film, Carbutt's talks in Philadelphia received little attention in
any but trade journals.

The extravagant claims of the Eastman Company had already
begun at a Boston convention of photographers in August. ( See
chap. 7.) In a talk delivered at that meeting, G. D. Milburn
of the Eastman Company said (Anthony's Photographic Bul
letin, August 24, 1889, as quoted on page 380 of the com
plainant's record of Equity 6928) : "The Eastman Company are
pioneer workers in flexible-film photography. They have, as
you all perhaps know, introduced first negative paper; second,
the American films; and now the very best of all their trans
parent films."

( Similarly, one Harry Davis some years later claimed Amer
ica's first nickelodeon; since no one was interested enough to
dispute his claim, Davis was able later to point to the report
of this claim as authority for the truth of the original statement!
In fact, dozens of buildings were constructed for motion picture
projection before 1900; yet many writers have followed Davis'
false claims, not being interested in searching original sources,
and have given Davis' claim for America's first nickelodeon
credence merely because "he himself has said it." Thus many
film historians have credited the Eastman Company with the
"invention" and/or "introduction" of celluloid-based film. With
out bothering to list others even before Carbutt see Carbutt's
reply to Milburn below we know that none of this is true.
Eastman's contribution was improvement of manufacturing
methods, and not inventive novelty. )

Milburn's clear implication if not direct statement that the
Eastman Company had been the first to introduct celluloid-

40

based film in America, was answered in the following words
by Carbutt, who was in the audience: (Ibid., page 377)

Some three or four years ago my investigations in celluloid
commenced. And since I have become a manufacturer of the
article I have learned that I was antedated one or two years.
So that I have to disagree with the gentleman who preceded
me in the statement that Mr. Eastman was the first to produce
the transparent film [for that matter, Eastman himself did no
such thing, since all records including contemporary state
ments by Eastman himself, ascribe this "production" to Henry
M. Reichenbach] . I was shown, in New York, in the office o
Messrs. Anthony, a film said to have been made some five years
ago on celluloid. And I have no reason to dispute that as being
a fact.

Early in this year I had a piece of film submitted to me over
thirty feet in length, of precisely the same nature as is now
brought on as being the invention of Mr. Eastman. I have some
of that film at my house; I haven't here . . .
E,]

The Scientific American, for example, which had a regular
photographic department discussing most of the recent photo
graphic developments, failed to mention the new film at this
time. By July of the next year, however, it was beginning to
reach many American amateurs, and large shipments were
being sent abroad:

We allude to Mr. John Carbutt, whose quite recent introduc
tion of Flexible Films for negative purposes is already so well
and favorably known ... In a conversation with Mr. Carbutt
recently, we learned from him that he had just made a ship
ment of thirty-four hundred dozen celluloid films to one dealer
in London . . .

These words, appearing in Wilsons Photographic Magazine of
July 6, 1889, accompany an ad listing many Carbutt flexible
film sizes, their degrees of sensitivity, etc., which had also ap
peared in the American Amateur Photographer.

By the time of the Boston convention Carbutt had introduced
Ms positive films, both tinted and plain. These films, we have
reason to believe, were the ones referred to by Dickson in his
notebook as "pink + " ( See page 71. ) Edison laboratory records
show us that on June 25, 1889,

1 doz. Em. no 1298 Carbutt 11 x 14

41

were received. 4 A careful search in many sources 5 did not reveal
what "Em. no 1298" was. But in the excellent collection of the
American Museum of Photography in Philadelphia there is an
empty pasteboard container 5%" x 8%" x % 6 ". Its label reads:

One doz. Carbutts

Flexible Negative Films

A Perfect Substitute for Glass

ECLIPSE . . .

Emulsion No. 5199, Sensitometer No. 27
The Eclipse Films are Extremely Sensitive

and Specially Intended for
Quick Studio Exposures Detective Cameras

Instantaneous Views and
Magnesium Flash-Light Photography

The inference is obvious: the "Em. no 1298" that the Edison
laboratory received on June 25, 1889, refers to the actual batch
or lot number which Carbutt gave to emulsions as he applied
them, so that both he and his customers could keep close check
on the quality, effectiveness, etc., of each new "flowing" as it
came from his factory. Thus, the film package in the American
Museum of Photography belongs to a later time than June 25,
1889, and the June 25, 1889, film received at the Edison labora
tory is from the twelve-hundred-and-ninety-eighth batch of
flexible film emulsion produced by Carbutt.

It is also interesting to notice that the price of the "Em. no
1298" was higher than that for the Keystone B plates. This dif
ference in cost was an important reason why the Carbutt films
were soon outdistanced in popularity by the Eastman films.
Curiously, the word "plates" was left off the notation of the
June 25 shipment. All entries for previous shipments from
Harvard and other suppliers had contained the word "plates."
The label of the American Museum of Photography item
substantiates our belief that this June 25, 1889, receipt was a
lot of films. That these films were films is also confirmed by the
fact that according to the private notes of Edison's attorneys
in the case against the Mutoscope Company heretofore referred

4 Edison archives receiving book entry for this date. Josephson, who ascribes
the use of celluloid to the first part of 1889 (page 387), apparently did not
examine any of these receiving books.

5 The George Eastman House, the Bella C. Landauer Collection of the New-
York Historical Society, the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress,
and all the photographic periodicals herein referred to.

42

to (note 2, page 4) there is a notation that a voucher for July
29, 1889, records the purchase of

1 doz 8/10 Key Eel Films

Here the word "films" is used, making certain that what is
referred to is celluloid and not glass. We have also "Eclipse"
films, which we know were for "instantaneous" work. 6 As
Carbutt had said in the paper read to the Franklin Institute on
November 21, 1888 (Journal of the Franklin Institute, De
cember, 1888):

I am frequently asked, are the films quick enough for instan
taneous work? In reply, I say, most assuredly, yes. A short
time ago I made some 8 x 10 negatives of the New York and
Philadelphia Express going at the rate of forty miles an hour.
I was on the shadow side, but the negatives were fully timed
and showed remarkable detail in the deepest shadows. The
train was perfectly sharp, and the driving rod of the engine
plain and distinct.

The general position that Dickson used Carbutt celluloid is
well established, for example, by the following quotation in
his 1933 article already referred to: 7 "My second batch of
emulsion was light struck, owing to the night watchman's burst
ing in at 2 A.M., which so disgusted me that I just slotted the
aluminum drum and wrapped a sheet of Carbutt's stiff sensi
tized celluloid over it . . ." And again, on page 440, 441, and
442 of the same piece, he refers to

sheet of Carbutt celluloid on light alum [i.e., aluminum] slotted
drum [accompanying sketch].

looking forward some day to getting decent lengths or strips
of film from Blair or Carbutt . . .

My next attempt . . . was to proceed with narrow strips of
Carbutt celluloid . . .

John Carbutt short strip celluloid [accompanying an illustra
tion]

single row of sprockets to fit the newly punched Carbutt strips
the pictures were taken horizontally, but were only % inch in
size on Carbutt celluloid strips.

6 The Carbutt advertisement in Wilsons Photographic Magazine of July 6,
1889, lists these "Eclipse" films as being the Carbutt item sold for instantane
ous work. These were said in the same place to have a sensitometer number
of 27.

7 The December, 1933, article in the Journal of the SMPE.

43

In a letter to Meadowcroft, Edison's secretary, in 1928, Dickson
wrote of "then sheets of John Carbutt sensitized celluloid used
. . . John Carbutt short strip celluloid" [accompanying sketch],
Ramsaye (page 59) agrees: "From John Carbutt . . . Dickson
obtained some heavy celluloid sheets coated with a photo
graphic emulsion." Ramsaye's information is otherwise incor
rect, however; he asserts that "Only very short bands or strips
of this material were obtainable/' whereas we know that "short
bands or strips" were not "obtainable" in the sense implied
here since Dickson cut these strips from Carbutt 8 x 10 or
11 x 14 celluloid films. And after describing this work Ramsaye
follows the crowd in the wake of a famous man by writing, in a
caption opposite page 57: "George Eastman, whose solution of
the kodak's problem of 'roller photography' with film in 1889
produced the material which Edison needed for the motion
picture."

Others have followed this error.

It furthermore appears that the well-known "Monkeyshines"
subjects were shot on this Carbutt celluloid. The "Monkey-
shines" subjects are so called because of Fred Ott's testimony
in the case cited above. In answer to direct question 12 on page
129 of the record already cited he says: "We had white cloth
wound around us and then a little belt to tie in around the
waist so as not to make it too baggy look like a balloon, and
then tied around my head, and made a monkey out of our
selves." This remark, quoted here verbatim, was made more
grammatical by Ramsaye (page 58) in his customary fashion
of "improvement." (Josephson, page 386, identifies this subject
with John Ott\)

In the legal files cited above, note 2, page 4, the item
marked 2.30 contains a list headed "Film," which includes,
among other items,

1. Film 2%" x 13%" with %" pictures

2. 2 pieces of film for same mch. with larger pictures %" films

These clearly contain the exhibits described in the 1898 in
fringement case as Cylinder Strips Nos. 1, 2, and 3: Cylinder
Strip No. 1 being a piece of No. 1 above and Cylinder Strips
Nos. 2 and 3 being No. 2 above. "Larger" here refers not to the
frames themselves, which are of the same size, but to the sub-

44

ject another example of the ignorance or carelessness with
which this case was prepared. The cylinder strips presented
in connection with the December 21, 1896, affidavit (see page
180), when placed end to end in accordance with the subject-
matter, equal exactly 13%". This earlier strip can also be identi
fied with the one in the 1898 case. Therefore, since this strip
containing the same subject matter in both cases was origi
nally 13%" long, allowing for a shrinkage of %" in a 14" original
length, and allowing for similar shrinkage and possible slight
loss in cutting 11 x 14 sheets vertically into four pieces, we
can be sure that such an 11 x 14 sheet corresponds exactly to
these cylinder strips. As I have shown on page 41 such celluloid
sheets were received at the laboratory on June 25, 1889. On
page 42 I have also identified these films with Carbutt. There
fore, since Dickson used Carbutt celluloid-based sheets, we
can only conclude that the cylinder strip "Monkeyshines" sub
jects represented by these Cylinder Strips Nos. 2 and 3 of the
1898 case were (1) taken on the Carbutt 11 x 14 celluloid base
and, (2) taken not earlier than June 25, 1889 (see also page
102).

It will be seen that Ott clearly included at least one other
person in his testimony. This circumstance is upheld by Dick-
son in his 1933 article when he refers to a "sunny natured
Greek," Sacco Albanese, as being put through "weird antics"
(see page 101). Dickson's association of these "Monkeyshines"
with the strip mechanism is clearly in error. 8 (See page 101
for the dates of the "Monkeyshines" subject.) A strip intro
duced in the December 21, 1896 affidavit (see page 180) also
contains a "Monkeyshines" subject which cannot be identified
with Fred Ott agreeing with Dickson's statement that it was
Albanese who had such pictures taken. Moreover, a careful
examination of these "Monkeyshines" subjects tends to dis
associate them from Fred Ott. Ott's prominent mustache can-

8 Dickson says on page 444 of this article, after having described his gradua
tion from cylinder mechanisms: "To take these photographs or strips . . .
Sacco Albanese . . . was one of my earliest victims, figuring mostly in the
^-inch and later in the ^-inch pictures. Draped in white, he was made to go
through some weird antics. (See Fig. 4)" Fig. 4 is the illustration of a
cylinder subject taken bodily from Ramsaye (opposite page 56). There is,
therefore, a contradiction, since Dickson is talking about strip photography
and Fig. 4, with which he illustrates his talk, shows cylinder photography.
Mr. Glenn Matthews, who edited the article in 1933, has told the writer that
Dickson read the article for error before it was published.

45

not be definitely distinguished in any of the subjects, and in
certain frames can be almost as definitely excluded.

Using Cylinder Strip Number 3, possibly the clearest of
these photographs, as an example, and lettering the vertical
rows of figures A to J inclusive, and numbering these columns
from top to bottom, 1 to 23, to include only whole figures, I
disassociate Fred Ott from the following examples among
many:

A: 12, 16, 17, 18, 19

B: 16, 23

C: 19, 20, 22

F: 17, and 18.

Of these A 17 and 18, and F 17 seem particularly conclusive.
There is also a probability that such violent body and leg move
ment as is shown in B 6-12 should not be associated with a man
of Fred Ott's temperament, whereas for the Maltese Albanese
it is much more likely. It is of course quite possible that Ott did
pose for "Monkey shines" no longer extant.

These subjects have been frequently reproduced, beginning
with an article in Gassier s in December, 1894, and later in the
Dicksons' History of the Kinetograph Kinetoscope and Kineto-
Phonograph of October or November, 1894, in Ramsaye op
posite page 56, and on page 440 of Dickson's 1933 article. I
have made a careful study of all such "Monkey shines" subjects
and have reached the following conclusions : ( 1 ) None of these
subjects ever approached a taking rate of 46 per second. 9 (2)
All can be identified with "Cylinder Strips Nos. 2 and 3" of
the 1898 case above cited ( see page 3 ) and none with "Cylinder
Strip No. 1" in this case. (3) Cylinder Strips Nos. 2 and 3 of
this exhibit are parts of the same strip, which was in turn a
strip cut from either a piece of Carbutt 11 x 14 celluloid-base
film or a later, similar film from another manufacturer.

We can be sure that these "Monkeyshines" subjects, and the
cylinder work of which they are a logical part, were not taken
before June 25, 1889, and indeed there is every reason to believe

9 This will be obvious to anyone who is accustomed to translate body move
ments into motion picture terms. Let us assume, for example, that it may
take a man moving with normal rapidity not less than % to % of a second to
remove his hat and stretch out his arms diagonally as in A7 to A10. This
action is accomplished here within three or four exposures; in a 40 or 46-per-
second rate more than twice as many exposures would have resulted.

46

that they were shot seventeen months later. (See page 100.)
Surely the character of Dickson's language suggests that the
Carbutt celluloid he seized in disgust was something he had
lying around, and not something he had just gotten in.

Furthermore, as I have said in connection with Edison's
Caveat I (page 22), these "Monkeyshines" were apparently
shot on a considerably enlarged version of the apparatus de
scribed then. How the intermittent movement was achieved
remains obscure, but the approximately 180 teeth of the gear
and the enlarged diameter of the cylinder now in the Edison
museum (accession #E5512) would correspond to the dimen
sions I indicated then as essential to a successful operation of
this apparatus. Another cylinder apparatus in the museum
(accession #E5511), upon which it has been suggested that
there is still a trace of photographic chemicals ( Complainant's
Record of case cited), was chemically examined at my instance
and found to be free of any such.

I have been unable to find an example of this early Carbutt
film. (Josephson, page 386, implies that the original celluloid
is still at the West Orange laboratory! ) Dickson describes it as
being "stiff," although he remembers it, naturally, only in con
trast to the film to which he had become accustomed throughout
the previous forty years. Ramsaye, following his trade-journal
instincts, embellishes Dickson's adjective "stiff" with one of
his own and adds "heavy" although "heavy" seems scarcely
the word to describe an 11" x 14" sheet weighing 1.2 ounces
even though one writer expressed doubt that it was quite
that thin. 10 This quotation may seem academic, however, con
sidering the fact that we know Carbutt got his film from the
Celluloid Manufacturing Company, and that this company
manufactured celluloid down to %oo" thick.

The Eastman film, soon to be standardized, was said to be
%ooo of an inch thick (Scientific American, July 6, 1889; see
also page 58), or approximately % of what was available to
Carbutt from the Celluloid Manufacturing Company at this

10 The Carbutt November 21, 1888 talk (Anthony's Photographic Bulletin,
December 8, 1888) gave the weight of two dozen 5" x 8" films as 7% ounces.
A simple calculation shows that one 11" x 14" film would weigh about 1.2
ounces. Anthony's Photographic Bulletin of November 10, 1888, says: "It is
claimed that this support is only one one-hundred of an inch in thickness;
but we think it is somewhat thicker."

47

time. This was a promise only, however, so far as I have been
able to determine: no periodical that I have seen said that it
was this thick. 11 But Eastman's film throughout 1889 and 1890
and beyond (the May, 1891, film shows frilling) was almost
unusable because of its frilling, cockling, and static electricity
markings. 12

6 Edison Goes to Europe

APROPOS THESE CARBUTT STRIPS, AND TO SHOW THE LENGTH TO

which a man with a commercial ax to grind will go in the mat
ter of sharpening that ax, the contradictory, confused testimony
of Edison and his three men in 1900 is interesting. 1 Eager to
establish a strip machine antedating his trip to Paris on August
3, 1889, and having Dickson's statement in his 1895 booklet
(see page 88) that he had achieved projection immediately
after this trip (and logically, therefore, an advanced camera)
Edison says:

(1) A number of views were taken of moving objects and
recorded on a film twenty to fifty feet long [before I
went to Paris] [answer to question 39]

(2) [In October, 1888] we could not get strips, but we could
cut strips from square pieces and paste them together
[answer to question 103]

(3) I think the first that we were able to get the continuous
strips was in the summer of 1889 [answer to question 104]

(4) I don't think [the celluloid base, gelatin emulsion film]
was on the market in 1888 [answer to cross-question 134]

(5) No, sir; I never remember of any paper [answer to cross-
question 137]

(6) . . . the first, I think, we bought from the Eastman Com
pany [answer to cross-question 139]

11 Eastman's patent specifications (U. S. #441831) said more than once,
concerning the emulsion, "I have found a thickness of one one- thousandth of
an inch for this film when dry satisfactory; but this may vary."

12 See 1933