OnVideo: Film Timeline
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OnVideo Timeline:
The Birth of Film

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1888: George Eastman mass produces and markets celluloid roll film.

1889: W.K.L. Dickson devises a film projection system for Thomas Edison.

1891: Earliest whole film on record: W.K.L. Dickson's "Fred Ott's Sneeze."

1891: Edison files patents for the Kinetograph and Kinetoscope (patents granted in 1893).

1893: Kinetograph/Kinetoscope displayed at Chicago World's Fair.

1894: First Kinetoscope parlour (peep-show) opened by Canadian Andrew Holland at 1155 Broadway, NYC, April 14.

1895: First moving picture made for the purpose of projection: Lumiere brothers' "Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory."

1895: Lumiere brothers project first films to private audiences of scientists and friends, March.

1895: Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins demonstrate their Phantoscope projector at the Cotton States Expo in Atlanta, September.

1895: First movies projected to a paying public: Lumiere brothers introduce their Cinematographe with 10 short films, shown in the basement of the Grand Cafe, Paris, December 28.

1896: Armat applies for a patent for his improved projector; licenses it to Edison as the Vitascope.

1896: World's first public movie theater opens: George Melies' Theatre Robert-Houdin in Paris.

1896: First official public showing of a movie in the United States for a paying audience, at Koster & Bial's Music Hall, 34th St. and Broadway, NYC (present site of Macy's), April 23.

1902: First permanent movie theater designed specifically for the exhibition of films, Thomas L. Tally's Electric Theatre, opens in Los Angeles.

1905: First nickelodeon opens in Pittsburgh, Pa.


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December 26, 1997