First pay-to-view movies

The first kinetoscope parlour (the first commercial motion picture house) is opened in NYC on April 14 1894 by Andrew and George Holland. Thomas Edison (best known for inventing the light bulb) invented the kinetograph (motion picture camera) in 1889. It was further developed by one of his employees, photographer William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson (pictured). In 1891, Edison built a kinetoscope, or peephole viewer. The device, roughly 1.2m high in a wooden cabinet, drew a perforated 35mm celluloid film strip about 15m long bearing sequential images over an electric light. A high-speed shutter rapidly broke the beam of light, providing the illusion of movement. A viewer looked at the film through a peephole 2.5cm in diameter atop the cabinet. A magnifying lens enlarged the image. The parlour’s 10 kinetoscopes are set up in two rows of five, each showing a different movie shot at the Black Maria, Edison’s movie production studio in West Orange, New Jersey. To view the films in either row costs 25 cents; half a dollar gives access to the entire bill. The 10 films: “Barber Shop”, “Bertoldi (mouth support)” (Ena Bertoldi, a British vaudeville contortionist), “Bertoldi (table contortion)”, “Blacksmiths”, “Roosters”, “Highland Dance”, “Horse Shoeing”, “Sandow” (Eugen Sandow, a German strongman managed by Florenz Ziegfeld), “Trapeze” and “Wrestling”. Edison adds his kinetophone for sound in 1895.