The Wizard of Menlo Park (26 page)

Even before others had found a way to earn profits from recorded music, Edison had begun thinking about a machine that did more. The “Kinetoscope Moving View” would do “for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear.” The first version was modeled on Edison’s phonograph, and was rather too ambitious, attempting to provide not only images but synchronized sound. This very early progenitor of modern cinema—only one of many that tinkerers around the world were working on—did not come close to resembling the machine that would cast mesmerizing images that filled large screens, for it was conceived on a microscopic scale. One cylinder was used to play back sound and a second one to provide visuals with thousands of tiny images, each taken as an individual photograph by a conventional camera and painstakingly mounted on the cylinder, one by one. They were arranged in a spiral so that they could be viewed continuously through a microscope. In theory, it was a clever arrangement; in practice, however, it was impossible to make the images lie flat and appear clearly.

Edison did not have time to work out solutions to the problems as he had done when the incandescent light was his top priority. He conceived of the kinetoscope just as he decided that ore milling was going to be his main project. Edison reassigned one of his principal assistants at the mine, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, whom Edison knew was also a talented photographer, to head up work on the kinetoscope. It was Dickson who would advance the project with myriad contributions—and continue to do so after he parted with Edison on less-than-amicable terms in 1895 and put his talents and experience to work for competitors.

No one had yet figured out how to rapidly open and close the camera’s shutter—dozens of times a second—while capturing crisp images on film that was in constant motion. A much improved camera was invented, but not by Edison or his assistants. Etienne-Jules Marey, the same distinguished French scientist who earlier had worked on recording human vocalization, had designed an ingenious camera: It recorded sixty images a second on a long continuous strip of film, which was pulled by a cam in a deliberatively jerky fashion to stop the film momentarily, so that light could saturate the film and capture motion. Not only had Marey made these crucial advances, he was happy to share what he had learned with the scientific community. When Edison visited Paris in 1889 for the Paris Exposition, he was cordially received by Marey and was presented with a copy of Marey’s book, which detailed in French his recent photographic work. Dickson, who had remained back at the laboratory in New Jersey but was fluent in French, likely had learned of Marey’s most recent work by reading French periodicals that he bought for the laboratory.

In Dickson’s account of the events of that year, Edison does not play much more than an honorific role. While Edison was in Paris, Dickson readied a prototype system that was far ahead of its time—projecting images upon a screen with synchronized sound. Upon the inventor’s return to the lab, Dickson appeared on the screen, raised his hat, and said, “Good morning, Mr. Edison, glad to see you back. I hope you are satisfied with the kineto-phonograph.”

This feat was accomplished by using a tachistoscope, which used a stroboscopic light and a revolving disc that could only hold a few images. It would not serve as the next step in the technical evolution of moving images, but it did show Dickson’s talents. Edison took no immediate notice, however, and temporarily shifted Dickson back to the mining project. Another month went by before Edison returned his attention to moving images and drew up a preliminary patent application for a motion-picture system that replaced the cylinder with a filmstrip, like Marey’s. But mining remained his pet project. Two more years passed before a working prototype was ready for a public demonstration.

The kinetoscope that was unveiled in 1891 was a console made of wood, about twenty inches square and standing four feet high, that resembled its older sibling, the nickel-in-the-slot phonograph. On top was mounted an eyepiece for the peephole, through which the viewer saw a moving image, backlit and magnified, as the film moved past the opening. The film was spliced together as one continuous fifty-foot loop, arranged on rollers. The film feed was powered by a battery-powered electric motor. In all, it was a mechanical marvel. Still, what the eye saw fell well short of a sensual feast. The images were small, and the first commercial film,
Blacksmith Scene,
ran only twenty seconds.

The machine was a novelty item, and Edison did not accord it much commercial potential. When he filed for a patent in the United States, his attorney urged him to file for foreign patents, too. Edison decided not to do so, however, when told it would cost $150. Legend has him saying at the time, “It isn’t worth it.” Without the protection of patents in other countries, however, he was vulnerable to legal attack. Patent disputes quickly flared and would last for more than twenty years.

When Edison visited Chicago in May 1891, reporters asked him if he was preparing to exhibit an “electrical novelty” for the World’s Columbian Exposition that the city would host in 1893. This was going to be the largest—and the most influential, it turned out—of the nineteenth-century world fairs. (Its White City would provide one visitor, children’s writer Frank Baum, the inspiration for the Emerald City of Oz.) This inquiry handed Edison an invitation to talk up his kinetoscope, which, even if not yet ready for commercial release, seemed certain to be complete within two years, well in time for the fair. He chose instead to play the role of the Wizard, promising the never-before-conceived. “My intention,” he declared, “is to have such a happy combination of photography and electricity that a man can sit in his own parlor and see depicted upon a curtain the forms of the players in opera upon a distant stage and hear the voices of the singers.” What he is describing—color visuals and audio, capturing a performance in a distant locale, in real time, projected upon a large flat surface—seems rather close to what we would come to know as color television. Edison declared he was confident that it would be “perfected” in time for the opening of the fair.

Such a claim might appear to be the product of the feverish, and incorrigibly self-deceiving, mind of the Wizard of Oz. But Edison’s expectation of the perfection of color television was more a case of absentmindedness—he was not immersed in the work on the kinetoscope as Dickson was. Standing at a distance, and preoccupied with mining, Edison gave his own motion pictures and sound only a half glance. If he did not face the practical issues on a daily basis himself, he was inclined to assume that the difficult was easy, and that the impossible took just a little bit longer.

The responsibility of readying the kinetoscope for the Chicago fair fell squarely upon Dickson’s shoulders, and the burden proved too much to bear: Soon exhausted, he was unable to work at all for almost three months. At the same time, the Panic of 1893 imperiled Edison’s ore mill; he had no time to return to the kinetoscope. In the meantime, Tate had proceeded on the assumption that all would be ready in time and had organized a syndicate, including a brother-in-law of one of the exposition’s commissioners, that secured a coveted concession to operate twenty-five machines on the grounds. The fair opened in May 1893 and introduced to the world wonders such as the Ferris wheel, Cracker Jacks, and Juicy Fruit gum. Before closing in October, it drew 27.5 million visitors. Those 27.5 million visitors did not get a look at Edison’s kinetoscope, however, as the machines were not completed until the next year, too late for the fair.

The development of the machines could have been accelerated, but only if Edison relinquished his notion that they were only a novelty. In February 1894, he wrote the photographer Eadweard Muybridge, “I have constructed a little instrument which I call a Kinetograph, with a nickel and slot attachment and some 25 have been made but I am very doubtful if there is any Commercial in it and fear they will not earn their costs.”

Astute observers noticed at the time that Edison had made the wrong call about the future of the phonograph, too. “The wizard Edison’s idea” that the phonograph would be adopted as a machine for office transcription “has not proved to be the success which its famous creator thought it would be,” the
New York Morning Advertiser
noticed. But as a source of amusement, it was doing well. One entrepreneur, Charles L. Marshall, had installed five thousand nickel-gobbling machines in phonograph parlors. He had developed a simple rule of thumb: Give the public what it wanted, and that meant avoiding what he called “classical songs” like “Thou Art Like Unto a Flower.” Music that appealed to a less-refined sensibility—he singled out “Throw Him Down, McCloskey” and “One of His Legs Is Longer Than It Really Ought to Be” as exemplars—brought in fifteen times as much revenue per day.

It was clear to everyone but Edison that the kinetoscope, once it was finally ready for release, would be a tremendous source of fun of all kinds—the silly, the spectacular, and the ribald. Even before the kinetoscope was released, an Albany newspaper reported on rumors that it would be perfectly suited for recording a boxing match, permitting hundreds of thousands to witness a match within a week after the event. Edison, however, continued to lecture the public in a churchy voice about the machine’s suitability for performances at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

His sermonizing did not guide actual practice back at the laboratory, however, which was in the hands of Dickson. On the laboratory’s grounds, Dickson had directed workmen to build the “Black Maria,” a long, oddly shaped movie studio covered in black tarpaper (“Black Maria” was a slang expression for a police wagon, which the studio resembled). It had a retractable roof and was mounted on a turntable so that the studio could be moved in tandem with the sun. Significantly, the first celebrity visitor Dickson invited out to be filmed was not a prima donna from the Met but rather “Sandow, the Strongman.” The bodybuilder had agreed to come for a $250 fee, which he offered to waive were he granted the privilege of shaking the hand of the great Edison himself. Edison appeared after Sandow and his entourage had arrived and did his assigned part, and Sandow did his, striking various poses that showed off musculature that is preserved for the ages thanks to the new invention. It does not, however, include a picture of Edison “feeling Sandow’s muscles with a curiously comical expression on his face,” as reported by the
Orange Chronicle.
Nor does it capture Sandow’s enjoyment of his own strength. He asked one of the laboratory assistants if he would mind being “chucked” out of the door while the cameras ran. No thanks, the assistant demurred, but Sandow proceeded anyway, grabbing him with one hand and sending him airborne through the door—too quickly for the cameras to capture. In other short features, Dickson and his helpers offered a little suggestion of sex, in the flashing legs of a Spanish dancer
(Carmencita),
and a good helping of violence
(Cockfight).
They were clearly not constrained by Edison’s high-minded goals for the new medium.

Alfred Tate saw the commercial possibilities that Edison could not, and invested in the first kinetoscope parlor, set up in a small space, 1155 Broadway, that had been a shoe shop. In April 1894, he and his brother received ten machines, arranged in two rows. These early machines did not have coin mechanisms, so Tate planned on offering patrons a ticket for twenty-five cents that would entitle the holder to look at the programs running in five machines in one row. In his memoirs, he tells of a great opening day.

It was two o’clock on Saturday afternoon; the machines had just been installed in preparation for the shop’s planned opening on Monday. In the meantime, Tate had placed a small printed announcement in the store window, along with a plaster bust of Edison. As he sat with his brother and the parlor’s mechanic, a small crowd gathered outside to look at the bust of Edison. Tate impulsively decided to open the shop for a few hours and see if they couldn’t pull in enough money by dinnertime to treat themselves to an elaborate spread at nearby Delmonico’s. Tate volunteered to man the ticket booth at the front. The doors were opened—and what followed was a blur of feverish business with no time for dinner. They could not get the place cleared before 1:00
A.M
. on Sunday, and had to look for an all-night restaurant. Without advertising, they had taken in $120 on the first day.

The tale does not reveal, however, whether a given patron would clamor to see the same twenty-second film multiple times. Novelty only went so far. On the movie-production side, Dickson and his associates were limited by their own creative resources and, even more, by the limits of the technology. Simply put, the short filmstrip did not have enough capacity to offer a narrative. How profitable a business could be built upon such a base, unable to tell a story of any kind, limited to showing a glimpse of a bodybuilder, an acrobat, or a dancer?

Edison and his circle could not see how to advance the medium beyond a proof-of-concept novelty. It was a group of young entrepreneurs who had no prior affiliation with Edison’s laboratory who eventually pulled the industry forward. Two brothers, Grey and Otway Latham, and their college friend Enoch Rector, visited Tate’s kinetoscope parlor not long after it had opened in April 1894, and emerged with a vision for building a business not upon acrobatic exhibitions but upon prizefights. They intuitively understood the critical component of a boxing match: It was a self-contained narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sandow, preening before the camera, lacked a story; a boxing match, however, was a story that played out within a roped-off rectangle, in fast-forward mode, completed in a matter of minutes.

If the Latham brothers and their friend could persuade the Edison Manufacturing Company to film actual matches exclusively on their behalf, they had no doubt that the exhibition, delivered by kinetoscopes, would be a smashing success. After securing preliminary encouragement from Edison’s company, the group, along with another partner, formed the Kinetoscope Exhibiting Company for the express purpose of showing boxing matches.