(1894), popularly known as Fred Ott’s Sneeze, which
represents, on Edison and Dickson’s part, a bril-
liant choice of a single, self-contained action for a
single, self-contained film of very limited length.
Edison’s staff made their movies, including Fred
Ott’s Sneeze, inside a crude, hot, and cramped shack
known as the Black Maria. The Black Maria was
really the first movie studio, for it contained the
camera, technicians, and actors. The camera was
limited in its motion, able only to move closer to or
away from the subject on a trolley. Light was pro-
vided by the sun, which entered through an aper-
ture in the roof, and the entire “studio” could be
rotated to catch the light. Edison demonstrated the
Kinetoscope to various audiences, public and pri-
vate, and in April 1894, the first Kinetoscope parlor
opened in New York City, thus inaugurating the his-
tory of commercial movies.
Although the visual image that one saw in the
Kinetoscope peephole viewer was moving, it could
only be enjoyed by one person at a time. In the
same month, the Lathams—Woodville and his two
sons, Grey and Otway, former Edison employees—
used their movie projector, the Eidoloscope, to
show a movie to the press. Although Edison put
down the significance of this demonstration, it was
in fact the first time an invited audience had seen
projected motion pictures in the United States.438 CHAPTER 10FILM HISTORY
12Edison’s Kinetograph and the Black MariaThese
images show Thomas Edison’s Black Maria—the first motion-
picture “studio”—pictured from the outside [1] and the inside
[2]. The interior view shows how awkward and static the
Kinetograph was because of both its bulk and its need to be
tethered to a power source. In addition, the performers had
very little room to move, and the environment was hot and
airless. The makeshift quality of the studio, as well as its
relatively modest size, is evident from the external view.
Short records of real lifeBefore narrative or editing,
Thomas Edison’s first movies (about 30 seconds in length)
were simple records of ordinary people and events: a man
and woman kissing, a young woman dancing, a man getting a
shave and haircut in a barber shop, and a woman and child
feeding doves in a barnyard. In Seminary Girls(1897), we see
young girls having a rare moment of fun in a harmless pillow
fight until the school’s matron interrupts them. The scene,
obviously staged for the stationary camera, was
photographed in Edison’s first studio, the Black Maria.