DOCSLIB.ORG

MUYBRIDGE, JAMES, and CONRAD by JANE E. GATEWOOD

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
MUYBRIDGE, JAMES, and CONRAD by JANE E. GATEWOOD MOVING IMAGES AND MODERN FICTION: MUYBRIDGE, JAMES, AND CONRAD by JANE E. GATEWOOD (Under the Direction of Adam Parkes) ABSTRACT By turning to the advent of moving images in the 1870s, I demonstrate that the aesthetic and formal shifts evident in the modern novel are not only the embodiment of subjective vision and a reaction to changing norms of aesthetic representation informed by technological mediation, but that these changes occurred much earlier than has previously been thought. By tracing a dialectic between moving images and modern novelists, I demonstrate that these authors and their progeny were not only interested in moving images but that the aesthetic of moving images and the debates surrounding them were integral to their developing literary style and form. Rather than situate the predominant link between cinema and modern literature in works of the Twenties and Thirties, this study explores the nascent relationship between the written word and visual media emerging at the end of the nineteenth century, demonstrating that while early film very often aspired to novelistic narrative, the novel likewise made compelling turns toward moving images much earlier than previously thought. My project will link two key progenitors of literary modernity—Henry James and Joseph Conrad—with early motion pictures and emergent cinema. By following such a path, we arrive at a more comprehensive picture of the form, as well as the function, of the modern novel. INDEX WORDS: Eadward Muybridge, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, cinema, modernism, moving images, motion pictures, instantaneous photography MOVING IMAGES AND MODERN FICTION: MUYBRIDGE, JAMES, AND CONRAD by JANE E. GATEWOOD BA, Emory University, 1998 MA, Montana State University-Bozeman, 2001 A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ATHENS, GEORGIA 2010 © 2010 Jane E. Gatewood All Rights Reserved MOVING IMAGES AND MODERN FICTION: MUYBRIDGE, JAMES, AND CONRAD by JANE E. GATEWOOD Major Professor: Adam Parkes Committee: Jed Rasula Hugh Ruppersburg Electronic Version Approved: Maureen Grasso Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia August 2010 iv DEDICATION For my parents, who have always supported me unconditionally. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Numerous people, libraries, archives, and institutions have contributed to the completion of this dissertation, and I am indebted to them. Several people offered significant guidance and input on this project, and I thank Adam Parkes and Laura Wright both for their initial and continued insight and guidance regarding its direction and construction. The UGA English Department and my faculty committee—Adam Parkes, Jed Rasula, and Hugh Ruppersburg—have all contributed considerable insight to this project and to them I am more than grateful. Numerous archives and archivists have assisted with my research and with locating materials, and to whom I am immeasurably indebted: Michael Boggan and Stephen Roper at the British Library; Fred Baum at the Library of Congress; Sean Delaney and many others at the British Film Institute; Ron Magliozzi and Charles Silver at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Leslie Morris and Susan Halpert at the Houghton Library of Harvard University; Stephen Crook, Nina Schneider, Isaac Gewirtz, and Philip Milito of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library. I thank Dean Maureen Grasso, the University of Georgia Graduate School, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their financial support of my research. Likewise, I thank the Institute for Historical Research, Senate House, London; and the School for Advanced Study, University of London, for their intellectual and logistical support. Goodenough College and the Goodenough Trust deserve thanks for the wonderful accommodation offered in the heart of London, and the UGA at Oxford Program, William Kretzschmar, and Ralph Hanna deserve thanks for first introducing me vi to archives in the U.K. I would also like to thank the archivists at the Beineke Library, Yale University for their assistance with Joseph Conrad’s “film play,” and I would like to thank Peter Underwood of Pennington Solicitors (U.K.) for permission to cite it. Kavita Pandit and the staff of the UGA Office of International Education have all offered collegial assistance and support for this project and to them I am more than indebted. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their intellectual and emotional guidance and support: James McClung, Kalpen Trivedi, Christine Albright, Peter Appel, Elizabeth Inglesby, Rachel Norwood, and Kathleen Anderson have all offered academic and moral support and deserve recognition and thanks; Winfield Terry deserves special appreciation for the consideration and understanding he has shown for this project during the time I have known him; and my family—Charles, Joan, Andrew, and Claudia Gatewood—and my many pets have all been more than accommodating during the time I have devoted to this venture, and I thank them for their unconditional love and support for me and for this endeavor. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................................v LIST OF FIGURES ......................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1 Introduction .......................................................................................................1 2 Unseen Views: Photographic Motion Studies and the Art of Fiction .............30 Eadweard Muybrige’s Motion Studies .....................................................36 Instantaneous Vision and Henry James’s Modern Realism ......................41 Henry James and the Muybridge Debate ..................................................45 Realist Vision and the Art of Fiction ........................................................57 3 The Image of Movement and the Crisis of Representation ............................76 Henry James, Moving Images, and Cinema .............................................80 Unnatural Vision and Uncanny Views .....................................................87 Spectatorial Perspectives and Shifting Points of View .............................95 4 Rendering Visuality: Conrad’s Visual Fictions ............................................107 Joseph Conrad and Visual Narrative Structures .....................................111 Instantaneity in The Secret Agent ...........................................................121 Aesthetics of Indeterminacy ...................................................................128 5 Conclusion ....................................................................................................134 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................140 viii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 2.1: Eadweard Muybridge "Sally Gardner Running at a 1:40 Gait" ......................32 Figure 2.2: Comic: “New Zoöpraxiscopic Views of an Eminent Actor in Action” ..........51 Figure 2.3: Comic: “Country Fair [After Muybridge]” .....................................................51 Figure 2.4: Comic: “Full Cry” ...........................................................................................52 Figure 2.5: Ernest Meissonier, Friedland-1807 .................................................................65 Figure 3.1: Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion, Plate 1, Male Walking ...............99 Figure 4.1: Pneumatic Regulator for Clocks ....................................................................124 Figure 4.2: Pneumatic Clock............................................................................................124 There is scarcely any branch of animal mechanics which has given rise to more labour and greater controversy than the paces of the horse.– Etienne-Jules Marey, 1873 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION The more radical the rejection of anything that came before, the greater the dependence on the past.-- Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight1 The first motion pictures, “movies,” were not cinema. To historians of the cinema, this statement will offer nothing new, but to historians of literature it suggests alternative perspectives from which to view the history of literature’s connection with the movies, making the easy conflation of terms such as “cinema,” “film,” “motion pictures,” and “movies” problematic in literary studies. Distinguishing between “cinema” and “motion pictures” forces us to shift the critical focus upon the intersection between motion pictures and literature temporally backward from the 1920s and 1930s to the late nineteenth century when photographic moving images first emerged.2 Assessing and analyzing this earlier shift is precisely what my study sets out to do. By doing so, I extend recent arguments linking literary modernism with cinema back into the 1870s, into what Tom Gunning has called the “chaotic curiosity shop of early modern life,” demonstrating 1 Paul De Man, Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism, 2nd ed., Theory and History of Literature V. 7 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 161. 2 Photographic motion pictures should be distinguished from animated drawing projected through magic lanterns which were extant as early as the seventeenth century. See Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907, ed. Charles Harpole,
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Elements of Screenology: Toward an Archaeology of the Screen 2006
    Repositorium für die Medienwissenschaft Erkki Huhtamo Elements of screenology: Toward an Archaeology of the Screen 2006 https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/1958 Veröffentlichungsversion / published version Zeitschriftenartikel / journal article Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Huhtamo, Erkki: Elements of screenology: Toward an Archaeology of the Screen. In: Navigationen - Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften, Jg. 6 (2006), Nr. 2, S. 31–64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/1958. Nutzungsbedingungen: Terms of use: Dieser Text wird unter einer Deposit-Lizenz (Keine This document is made available under a Deposit License (No Weiterverbreitung - keine Bearbeitung) zur Verfügung gestellt. Redistribution - no modifications). We grant a non-exclusive, Gewährt wird ein nicht exklusives, nicht übertragbares, non-transferable, individual, and limited right for using this persönliches und beschränktes Recht auf Nutzung dieses document. This document is solely intended for your personal, Dokuments. Dieses Dokument ist ausschließlich für non-commercial use. All copies of this documents must retain den persönlichen, nicht-kommerziellen Gebrauch bestimmt. all copyright information and other information regarding legal Auf sämtlichen Kopien dieses Dokuments müssen alle protection. You are not allowed to alter this document in any Urheberrechtshinweise und sonstigen Hinweise auf gesetzlichen way, to copy it for public or commercial purposes, to exhibit the Schutz beibehalten werden. Sie dürfen dieses Dokument document in public, to perform, distribute, or otherwise use the nicht in irgendeiner Weise abändern, noch dürfen Sie document in public. dieses Dokument für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke By using this particular document, you accept the conditions of vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, aufführen, vertreiben oder use stated above. anderweitig nutzen. Mit der Verwendung dieses Dokuments erkennen Sie die Nutzungsbedingungen an.
    [Show full text]
  • Understanding Edward Muybridge: Historical Review of Behavioral
    NEUROSURGICAL FOCUS Neurosurg Focus 39 (1):E4, 2015 Understanding Edward Muybridge: historical review of behavioral alterations after a 19th-century head injury and their multifactorial influence on human life and culture Sunil Manjila, MD,1 Gagandeep Singh, MD,2 Ayham M. Alkhachroum, MD,2 and Ciro Ramos-Estebanez, MD, PhD2,3 Departments of 1Neurosurgery and 2Neurology, and 3Divisions of Neurocritical Care and Stroke, Neurological Institute, University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio Edward Muybridge was an Anglo-American photographer, well known for his pioneering contributions in photography and his invention of the “zoopraxiscope,” a forerunner of motion pictures. However, this 19th-century genius, with two original patents in photographic technology, made outstanding contributions in art and neurology alike, the latter being seldom acknowledged. A head injury that he sustained changed his behavior and artistic expression. The shift of his interests from animal motion photography to human locomotion and gait remains a pivotal milestone in our understand- ing of patterns in biomechanics and clinical neurology, while his own behavioral patterns, owing to an injury to the orbitofrontal cortex, remain a mystery even for cognitive neurologists. The behavioral changes he exhibited and the legal conundrum that followed, including a murder of which he was acquitted, all depict the complexities of his personality and impact of frontal lobe injuries. This article highlights the life journey of Muybridge, drawing parallels with Phineas Gage, whose penetrating head injury has been studied widely. The wide sojourn of Muybridge also illustrates the strong con- nections that he maintained with Stanford and Pennsylvania universities, which were later considered pinnacles of higher education on the two coasts of the United States.
    [Show full text]
  • Eadweard Muybridge Collection UPT 50 M993 Finding Aid Prepared by Amy Miller, Revised by Dianna Hemsath and Mary D
    Eadweard Muybridge Collection UPT 50 M993 Finding aid prepared by Amy Miller, revised by DiAnna Hemsath and Mary D. McConaghy. Last updated on October 31, 2013. University of Pennsylvania, University Archives and Records Center October 2000, January 2005, September 2008 Eadweard Muybridge Collection Table of Contents Summary Information....................................................................................................................................3 Biography/History..........................................................................................................................................4 Scope and Contents....................................................................................................................................... 5 ARRANGEMENT......................................................................................................................................... 6 Administrative Information........................................................................................................................... 6 Controlled Access Headings..........................................................................................................................7 Collection Inventory...................................................................................................................................... 8 Animal Locomotion Study Collotypes and Publications........................................................................ 8 Photographs............................................................................................................................................89
    [Show full text]
  • Eadweard Muybridge Photograph Collection
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt3w1036p7 Online items available Guide to the Eadweard Muybridge Photograph Collection Stanford University. Libraries.Department of Special Collections and University ArchivesStanford University. Libraries.Department of Special Collections and University Archives Stanford, California October 2010 Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Note This encoded finding aid is compliant with Stanford EAD Best Practice Guidelines, Version 1.0. Guide to the Eadweard Muybridge PC0006 1 Photograph Collection Overview Call Number: PC0006 Creator: Muybridge, Eadweard, 1830-1904 Title: Eadweard Muybridge photograph collection Dates: 1868-1929 Physical Description: 8.25 Linear feet Summary: This collection includes original Muybridge glass plate negatives and prints, as well as modern day copy prints of his photographs. Original materials, 1872-1880, include images of the Stanfords' residences in Sacramento and San Francisco, other unidentified estates, and two printed cards from his horse in motion series, 1878. Images represented by copy prints include Canadian Pacific Railway, Indians, San Francisco, Oakland, and several Central America photographs. Also included in the collection is a set of glass slides, primarily of images included in this collection, probably assembled by Harry C. Peterson, former curator of the Stanford Museum. Language(s): The materials are inEnglish. Repository: Department of Special Collections and University Archives Green Library 557 Escondido Mall Stanford, CA 94305-6064 Email: [email protected] Phone: (650) 725-1022 URL: http://library.stanford.edu/spc Biographical/Historical Sketch Eadweard Muybridge was born in Kingston-upon-Thames, England, in April 1830 as Edward James Muggeridge. He came to the United States in 1851 and worked for two publishing companies on the east coast until 1855, when he moved to California and established a book store in San Francisco.
    [Show full text]
  • Eadweard Muybridge 1 Eadweard Muybridge
    Eadweard Muybridge 1 Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muybridge Born Edward James Muggeridge9 April 1830Kingston upon Thames, England Died 8 May 1904 (aged 74)Kingston upon Thames, England Resting place Woking, Surrey, England Nationality [1] British Ethnicity English Occupation Photographer Eadweard J. Muybridge ( /ˌɛdwərdˈmaɪbrɪdʒ/; 9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904) was an English photographer who spent much of his life in the United States. He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion which used multiple cameras to capture motion, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip.[2] Names Born Edward James Muggeridge, he changed his name several times early in his US career. First he changed his forenames to the Spanish equivalent Eduardo Santiago, perhaps because of the Spanish influence on Californian place names. His surname appears at times as Muggridge and Muygridge (possibly due to misspellings), and Muybridge from the 1860s. In the 1870s he changed his first name again to Eadweard, to match the spelling of King Edward shown on the plinth of the Kingston coronation stone, which was re-erected in Kingston in 1850. His name remained Eadweard Muybridge for the rest of his career.[3] However, his gravestone bears a further variant, Eadweard Maybridge. He used the pseudonym Helios (Greek god of the sun) on many of his photographs, and also as the name of his studio and his son's middle name.[4] Eadweard Muybridge 2 Early life and career He was born at Kingston-on-Thames, England on April 9, 1830. He emigrated to the US, arriving in San Francisco in 1855, where he started a career as a publisher's agent and bookseller.
    [Show full text]
  • Teachers Guide
    Teachers Guide Exhibit partially funded by: and 2006 Cartoon Network. All rights reserved. TEACHERS GUIDE TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE 3 EXHIBIT OVERVIEW 4 CORRELATION TO EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS 9 EDUCATIONAL STANDARDS CHARTS 11 EXHIBIT EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES 13 BACKGROUND INFORMATION FOR TEACHERS 15 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS 23 CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES • BUILD YOUR OWN ZOETROPE 26 • PLAN OF ACTION 33 • SEEING SPOTS 36 • FOOLING THE BRAIN 43 ACTIVE LEARNING LOG • WITH ANSWERS 51 • WITHOUT ANSWERS 55 GLOSSARY 58 BIBLIOGRAPHY 59 This guide was developed at OMSI in conjunction with Animation, an OMSI exhibit. 2006 Oregon Museum of Science and Industry Animation was developed by the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in collaboration with Cartoon Network and partially funded by The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. and 2006 Cartoon Network. All rights reserved. Animation Teachers Guide 2 © OMSI 2006 HOW TO USE THIS TEACHER’S GUIDE The Teacher’s Guide to Animation has been written for teachers bringing students to see the Animation exhibit. These materials have been developed as a resource for the educator to use in the classroom before and after the museum visit, and to enhance the visit itself. There is background information, several classroom activities, and the Active Learning Log – an open-ended worksheet students can fill out while exploring the exhibit. Animation web site: The exhibit website, www.omsi.edu/visit/featured/animationsite/index.cfm, features the Animation Teacher’s Guide, online activities, and additional resources. Animation Teachers Guide 3 © OMSI 2006 EXHIBIT OVERVIEW Animation is a 6,000 square-foot, highly interactive traveling exhibition that brings together art, math, science and technology by exploring the exciting world of animation.
    [Show full text]
  • Eadweard Muybridge
    Eadweard Muybridge TEACHERS AND STUDENTS NOTES For use at Kingston Museum or in the classroom Suitable for teachers and students of Key Stage 2-5Stage 3-5 By Caroline Burt and Alexandra Reynolds Kingston Museum and Heritage Service This pack provides a brief introduction to the life and work of Eadweard Muybridge. The pack looks at a selection of works in detail, providing background information, discussion ideas and suggested activities. Cover Images (clockwise from top left) EM8132 Muybridge greets athlete EM0052 Woman dancing EM6880 Ox. Walk, gallop, trot, run EM7838 Fishing Boat coming ashore by moonlight, Guatemala/Panama All images in this pack are courtesy of Kingston Museum and Heritage Service unless otherwise stated www.kingston.gov.uk/museum 2 Introduction Eadweard Muybridge (Kingston upon Thames 1830 - 1904) was one of the world's most innovative and influential photographic pioneers. His extensive studies of humans and animals in motion played a critical role in the history of photography and moving image. Eadweard Muybridge was born Edward Muggeridge to a merchant family in Kingston upon Thames on April 9th 1830. Before his death in 1904, Muybridge would emigrate to America, change his name three times, come close to death and suffer brain damage in a carriage accident. As well as photographing the landscapes, people and cities of 19th Century America, Muybridge was also instrumental in the development of instantaneous photography. To accomplish his famous motion sequence photography, Muybridge designed his own high speed electronic shutter and electro-timer, to be used alongside a battery of up to 24 cameras. Muybridge used this technology to capture the movement of humans and animals in split-second detail, something that had never been seen before.
    [Show full text]
  • Moving Pictures: the History of Early Cinema by Brian Manley
    Discovery Guides Moving Pictures: The History of Early Cinema By Brian Manley Introduction The history of film cannot be credited to one individual as an oversimplification of any his- tory often tries to do. Each inventor added to the progress of other inventors, culminating in progress for the entire art and industry. Often masked in mystery and fable, the beginnings of film and the silent era of motion pictures are usually marked by a stigma of crudeness and naiveté, both on the audience's and filmmakers' parts. However, with the landmark depiction of a train hurtling toward and past the camera, the Lumière Brothers’ 1895 picture “La Sortie de l’Usine Lumière à Lyon” (“Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory”), was only one of a series of simultaneous artistic and technological breakthroughs that began to culminate at the end of the nineteenth century. These triumphs that began with the creation of a machine that captured moving images led to one of the most celebrated and distinctive art forms at the start of the 20th century. Audiences had already reveled in Magic Lantern, 1818, Musée des Arts et Métiers motion pictures through clever uses of slides http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Magic-lantern.jpg and mechanisms creating "moving photographs" with such 16th-century inventions as magic lanterns. These basic concepts, combined with trial and error and the desire of audiences across the world to see entertainment projected onto a large screen in front of them, birthed the movies. From the “actualities” of penny arcades, the idea of telling a story in order to draw larger crowds through the use of differing scenes began to formulate in the minds of early pioneers such as Georges Melies and Edwin S.
    [Show full text]
  • Douglass Crockwell Collection, 1897-1976, Bulk 1934-1968
    Douglass Crockwell collection, 1897-1976, bulk 1934-1968 Finding aid prepared by Ken Fox, Project Archivist, George Eastman Museum, Moving Image Department, April 2015 Descriptive Summary Creator: Crockwell, Spencer Douglass, 1904-1968 Title: Douglass Crockwell collection Dates: 1897-1976, bulk 1934-1968 Physical Extent: 30.1 cubic feet Repository: Moving Image Department George Eastman Museum 900 East Avenue Rochester, NY 14607 Phone: 585-271-3361 Email: [email protected] Content Abstract: Spencer Douglass Crockwell was a commercial illustrator, experimental filmmaker, inventor, Mutoscope collector, amateur scientist, and Glens Falls, New York, resident. The Douglass Crockwell Collection contains Mr. Crockwell's personal papers, professional documents, films, Mutoscope reels, flip books, drawings, and photographs documenting his professional, civic, and personal life. Language: Collection materials are in English Location: Collection materials are located onsite. Access Restrictions: Collection is open to research upon request. Copyright: George Eastman Museum holds the rights to the physical materials but not intellectual property rights. Acquisition Information: The earliest acquisition of collection materials occurred on August 20, 1973, when one table Mutoscope and three Mutoscope reels were received by the George Eastman Museum as an unrestricted gift from Mr. Crockwell's widow. On March 22, 1974, Mrs. Crockwell transferred most of the Douglass Crockwell Collection to the Museum with the 1 understanding that one third of the collection would be received as an immediate gift. The remaining balance of the collection -- which included the films -- would be received as a loan for study purposes with the understanding it would be accessioned into the permanent collection as a gift within the next two years.
    [Show full text]
  • Proto-Cinematic Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction
    The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Fall 12-2016 Moving Words/Motion Pictures: Proto-Cinematic Narrative In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction Kara Marie Manning University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Other Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Manning, Kara Marie, "Moving Words/Motion Pictures: Proto-Cinematic Narrative In Nineteenth-Century British Fiction" (2016). Dissertations. 906. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/906 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. MOVING WORDS/MOTION PICTURES: PROTO-CINEMATIC NARRATIVE IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH FICTION by Kara Marie Manning A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School and the Department of English at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Approved: ________________________________________________ Dr. Eric L.Tribunella, Committee Chair Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Monika Gehlawat, Committee Member Associate Professor, English ________________________________________________ Dr. Phillip Gentile, Committee Member Assistant Professor,
    [Show full text]
  • History-Of-The-Moving-Image-LIB-Pd
    tEl:T. n83 MASTERPIECES OF MOVINGIMAGE TECI{NOLOGY SEPTEMBER 10, 1988 _ MARCH 19, 1989 Descri ption! gf_fhq Objects in the Exhibition American Museum of the Moving lmage Edison KinetograPh Camera 1891 ln 1888, Thomas Edison set out to create "an instrument that does for the Eye what the phono- graph does for the Ear...." He assigned the project to one of his engineers, W.K.L. Dickson, who, after a series of false starts, completed the Kinetograph in 1891. The Kinetograph was the first motion picture camera to use the Eastman celluloid f ilm; this was a key breakthrough which made modern motion pic- tures possible. The camera photographed circular images one-half inch in diameter on perforated, f lexible strips of film which moved horizontally through a mechanized sprocket system' The prototype was cannibalized for laboratory use soon after completion, but was partially reconstructed in '1895-96 as evidence in a patent dispute. (Lent by the Edison National Historic Site) <Technician Charles H. Kayser posing with the Kinetograph in Edison's West Orange, New .lersey laboratory, c. 1891 . Edison KinetoscoPe 1894 To exploit his moving pictures commercially, Edison introduced the Kinetoscope, a "peep-show" viewer capable of presenting half-minute film shows. The machines were sold on a territory basis to showmen who installed them in arcades and Kinetoscope Parlors in all the major cities of America and Europe' Commercially, the Kinetoscope was a short-lived novelty, but its appearance directly inspired other inventors to find a way of projecting moving images onto a screen. (Reproduction made by A.
    [Show full text]
  • THE PUBLIC EXHIBITION of MOVING PICTURES BEFORE 1896 by Deac Rossell
    THE PUBLIC EXHIBITION OF MOVING PICTURES BEFORE 1896 by Deac Rossell [Pre-publication English-language text later published in slightly altered form in KINtop: Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films, 14/15 (Frankfurt am Main/Basle, 2006: Stroemfeld/Roter Stern)] Part 1: Choosing a different perspective This article is an attempt to refresh our ideas of how moving pictures were invented and first seen. It is also an attempt to find one new way — of many possible ways — of discussing the earliest moving pictures, and in so doing to think again about which inventors or pioneers were significant in developing moving image culture. A fresh look at the period of invention before 1896, particularly one that is frank and open about its assumptions and methodology, and one that incorporates recent scholarship from all of Europe as well as America, can help to illuminate the work of some figures who have been poorly served – or even wholly ignored – in the received version of the history of the invention of moving pictures. As an appendix to the main text, but as a crucial element of this recast narrative, a chronology noting specific moving picture exhibitions forms Part 3 of this essay. Why is an article about the earliest public exhibition of moving pictures necessary? What new shapes does it bring to the story of the invention of the cinema as it is usually written? This story is usually conceived as a narrative about technology; indeed, the very use of the word “invention” popularly implies some ingenious arrangement of mechanical elements to produce a wholly new effect or process.
    [Show full text]