Editing Thomas Edison (section)

===Motion pictures===
[[File:Leonard-Cushing fight (1894).webm|thumb|The ''[[Leonard–Cushing Fight]]'' in June 1894; each of the six one-minute rounds recorded by the Kinetoscope was made available to exhibitors for $22.50.<ref>[http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/papr:@filreq(@field(NUMBER+@band(edmp+4026))+@field(COLLID+edison)) Leonard–Cushing fight] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130904202914/http://rs6.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem%2Fpapr%3A%40filreq%28%40field%28NUMBER+%40band%28edmp+4026%29%29+%40field%28COLLID+edison%29%29 |date=September 4, 2013 }} Part of the Library of Congress/''Inventing Entertainment'' educational website. Retrieved December 14, 2006.</ref> Customers who watched the final round saw Leonard score a knockdown.]]
Edison was granted a patent for a motion picture camera, labeled the "Kinetograph". He did the electromechanical design while his employee [[William Kennedy Dickson]], a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson.<ref name=Israel /> In 1891, Thomas Edison built a [[Kinetoscope]] or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.<ref>{{cite web|title=History of Edison Motion Pictures |url=http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist.html |access-date=October 14, 2007 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101208125727/http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist.html |archive-date=December 8, 2010 |url-status=live }}</ref>

In April 1896, [[Thomas Armat]]'s [[Vitascope]], manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later, he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film.

Officially the kinetoscope entered Europe when wealthy American businessman [[Irving T. Bush]] (1869–1948) bought a dozen machines from the Continental Commerce Company of Frank Z. Maguire and Joseph D. Baucus. Bush placed from October 17, 1894, the first kinetoscopes in London. At the same time, the French company Kinétoscope Edison Michel et Alexis Werner bought these machines for the market in France. In the last three months of 1894, the Continental Commerce Company sold hundreds of kinetoscopes in Europe (i.e. the Netherlands and Italy). In Germany and in [[Austria-Hungary]], the kinetoscope was introduced by the Deutsche-österreichische-Edison-Kinetoscop Gesellschaft, founded by the Ludwig Stollwerck<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.victorian-cinema.net/stollwerck.htm |title=Martin Loiperdinger. ''Film & Schokolade. Stollwercks Geschäfte mit lebenden Bildern''. KINtop Schriften Stroemfeld Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, Basel 1999 ISBN 3878777604 (Book and Videocassette) |publisher=Victorian-cinema.net |access-date=January 29, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101202000041/http://victorian-cinema.net/stollwerck.htm |archive-date=December 2, 2010 |url-status=live }}</ref> of the Schokoladen-Süsswarenfabrik Stollwerck & Co of Cologne.

The first kinetoscopes arrived in Belgium at the [[Fairs]] in early 1895. The Edison's Kinétoscope Français, a Belgian company, was founded in Brussels on January 15, 1895, with the rights to sell the kinetoscopes in Monaco, France and the French colonies. The main investors in this company were Belgian industrialists. On May 14, 1895, the Edison's Kinétoscope Belge was founded in Brussels. Businessman Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki, living in London but active in Belgium and France, took the initiative in starting this business. He had contacts with [[Leon Gaumont]] and the [[American Mutoscope and Biograph]] Co. In 1898, he also became a shareholder of the Biograph and Mutoscope Company for France.<ref>Guido Convents, ''Van Kinetoscoop tot Cafe-Cine de Eerste Jaren van de Film in Belgie, 1894–1908, pp. 33–69.'' Universitaire Pers Leuven. Leuven: 2000. Guido Convents, "Edison's Kinetscope in Belgium, or, Scientists, Admirers, Businessmen, Industrialists and Crooks", pp. 249–258. in C. Dupré la Tour, A. Gaudreault, R. Pearson (eds), ''Cinema at the Turn of the Century''. Québec, 1999.</ref>

[[Edison Studios|Edison's film studio]] made nearly 1,200 films. The majority of the productions were short films showing everything from acrobats to parades to fire calls including titles such as ''[[Fred Ott's Sneeze]]'' (1894), ''[[The Kiss (1896 film)|The Kiss]]'' (1896), ''[[The Great Train Robbery (1903 film)|The Great Train Robbery]]'' (1903), ''[[Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1910 film)|Alice's Adventures in Wonderland]]'' (1910), and the first ''[[Frankenstein (1910 film)|Frankenstein]]'' film in 1910. In 1903, when the owners of [[Luna Park (Coney Island, 1903)|Luna Park, Coney Island]] announced they would execute [[Topsy (elephant)|Topsy the elephant]] by strangulation, poisoning, and electrocution (with the electrocution part ultimately killing the elephant), Edison Manufacturing sent a crew to film it, releasing it that same year with the title ''[[Electrocuting an Elephant]]''.
[[File:A day with Thomas A. Edison.webm|thumb|left|thumbtime=1|upright=1.1| ''A Day with Thomas Edison'' (1922)]]
As the film business expanded, competing exhibitors routinely copied and exhibited each other's films.<ref>[http://www.victorian-cinema.net/lubin.htm Siegmund Lubin (1851–1923)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070826125737/http://victorian-cinema.net/lubin.htm |date=August 26, 2007 }}, Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. Retrieved August 20, 2007.</ref> To better protect the copyrights on his films, Edison deposited prints of them on long strips of [[photographic paper]] with the [[U.S. copyright office]]. Many of these paper prints survived longer and in better condition than the actual films of that era.<ref>[http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist1.html#EE "History of Edison Motion Pictures: Early Edison Motion Picture Production (1892–1895)"].  {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070825110254/http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist1.html#EE |date=August 25, 2007 }}, Memory.loc.gov, [[Library of Congress]]. Retrieved August 20, 2007.</ref>

In 1908, Edison started the [[Motion Picture Patents Company]], which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow of the [[Acoustical Society of America]], which was founded in 1929.

Edison said his favorite movie was ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]''. He thought that [[talkies]] had "spoiled everything" for him. "There isn't any good acting on the screen. They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act. I can sense it more than you because I am deaf."<ref name="condensed1042">''Reader's Digest'', March 1930, pp. 1042–1044, "Living With a Genius", condensed from ''The American Magazine'', February 1930.</ref> His favorite stars were [[Mary Pickford]] and [[Clara Bow]].<ref>"Edison Wears Silk Nightshirt, Hates Talkies, Writes Wife", Capital Times, October 30, 1930</ref>