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The first person to create motion photograph, showing how people and animals move.
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Created a camera that took 12 pictures per second. This camera was shaped like a gun.
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Developed a Kinetoscope, a moving picture device where the film past behind a peephole. This was only used for a single viewer. Edison presented his kinetoscope at the World's Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. He recieved patents for his camera. Edison then created his first motion picture in New Jersey. Later on, coin operated kinetoscopes showed up in a New York City amusement park.
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Louis and August created a film projecter where motion pictures could be viwed by many people. They presented their first commercial in Paris.
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Made films that told a story, starting with The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery.
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Fantasmagorie
The first nickelodeon was opened in Pittsburgh. They used Cooper Hewitt to make it efficient to shoot movies indoors. The first animated cartoon is produced. -
There are over 9000 movie theatres in the United States. The only movies were about 10-12 minutes long and nobody knew the actual names of the actors.
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Laemmle developed his own motion picture company and started the star system by hiring one of the anonymous actresses, Florence Lawrence, and beginning the huge publicity campaign.
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Carl Laemmle creates Universal picture, the very first major studio. Adolf Zukor creates Famous Players; Mack Sennett starts the Keystone Film Company; and Mutual Film Corporation is formed.
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The first African American owned film studio is made. The indepentdent African American film maker, Oscar Micheaux makes the Micheaux Film and Book Corporation.
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Lee Deforrest finds a way to record sound on the edge of a film strip. Western Electric and Warner Bros. agree to make a system for films with sound. Warner Bros. movie Don Juan contains music but to verbal speaking.
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Wait a minute, Wait a minute
Warner Bros. production, The Jazz Singer, has the first film with spoken words. "Wait a minute, waita minute. You ain't heard nothin' yet." This was created by recording sounds on discs. -
Mickey is popularized in the animated cartoon Steamboat Willie.
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Steamboat Willie
Paramount Pictures states that it will only produce motion pictures called "Talkies". Walt Disney's Galloping Gaucho and Steamboat Willie are the first animated cartoons with sound. -
The motion pictures industries adopt the Production Code, a new set of guidlines that tell you what you can and cannot put into movies.
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The movie industry starts to dub in dialogue of films exported to foreign countries.
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The Payne Fund Study argues that films shape children's behaviour.
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The first drive-in movie theatre opens in New Jersey.
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Warner Bros. become the first film company to shut down its German distribution office to protest the Nazi's anti-Semitic policies.
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RCA begins experimental television broadcasts from the Empire State Building.
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Walt Disney produces it's first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
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Warner Bros. proceeds with the making of a film called Confessions of a Nazi Spy, even though Germany counts for 30% of Hollywood's foreign profits.
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The first commercial television station begins broadcasting.
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Nelson Poyter of the Office of War Information Motion Picture Bureau says that Hollywood's guiding principle should be "Will this picture help to win the war?"
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The War Production Board imposes a $5000 limit on all set construction. Wartime cloth restrictions are imposed, prohibitng pleated cuffs and trousers.
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The NAACP accuses The Walt Disney Company of romanticizing slavery in the film The Song of the South.
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Hollywood introduces Cinerama and 3-D.
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The Walt Disney Company begins to produce television programs.
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The first kiss between and white actress and a black actor happens in Island in the Son, when Joan Fontaine kisses Harry Belafonte.
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A movie features "Smell-O-Vision."
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HBO begins on cable television.
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Sony introduces Betamax, the first videocassette recorder for home use. It costs $2,295.
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Sherry Lansing becomes the first woman to head a major studio when she becomes president of 20th Century Fox.
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Half of U.S. homes receive cable television.
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Americans spend $12 billion to buy or rent video tapes, compared to just $4.9 billion on box office ticket sales. 76% of homes have VCRs.
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Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen form the film studio DreamWorks.
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Titanic, which premiered in 1997, becomes the highest grossing film in Hollywood history, earning $580 million domestically.
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The Blair Witch Project, which cost $30,000 to make, grosses $125 million, making it the most profitable film in Hollywood history.
