Thomas Edison’s Vitascope debuted in New York City on this date in 1896. The light-infused motion picture projector changed everything, advancing the profile and distribution of movies in Vaudeville theaters and making serious progress for show business. In his Ten Days series book on Edison, author David Colbert calls the theatrical event “larger than life.”
Colbert writes of April 23 that, at 4:45 PM, “[i]n the balcony of a Broadway music hall, workers are scrambling over one another, hammers and wrenches in hand, to remodel the auditorium for a special performance.”
“Red velvet seats are being removed from a section of the balcony, and carpenters are putting up walls to create a separate locked room. This is the beginning of something important in history; but it also marks the end of an era for Edison. Although he has many years of inventing ahead of him–he’s just 49–this is the last time he’ll unveil a world-changing innovation.”
The invention, the Vitascope, is not entirely Edison’s creation. Neither does the Vitascope totally originate in his New Jersey workshop. “But Edison’s efforts,” Colbert notes, “have been a major force in bringing the movies to life.”
Through his work in key partnerships, Edison had created a real-life film animation, integrated his phonograph for sound with moving pictures and realized the Vitascope. Built to compete with France’s Lumiere brothers, who debuted their own film projection in Paris the previous year, as well as to advance his Kinetoscope, Edison sought to gain and assure market share in America’s emerging movie industry.
On this night, those who bought tickets waited through six numbers of a regular music hall show for the Vitascope’s movie projections to begin. At nearly 10 PM, the first of six films began to thunderous applause. The program consisted of Rough Sea at Dover as well as Edison’s movie studio’s films, Band Drill/The Milk White Flag, Serpentine Dance, Umbrella Dance, Walton and Slavin Boxing and The Monroe Doctrine. After the screenings, the audience cheered. Someone yelled: “Hooray for Edison!”
Within days, the New York Times published a review: “The Vitascope differs from the Kinetoscope in its size and the size of its pictures; it differs in that its effects are almost the acme of realism; it differs in its possibilities, which, theatrical managers say, are boundless.” That summer, the Vitascope toured 25 cities across America with displays in Boston, Philadelphia, Atlantic City, Scranton, New Orleans, Cleveland, Buffalo, San Francisco, Baltimore, Detroit, Chicago and, of course, Los Angeles.
According to the Library of Congress, Thomas Edison’s Vitascope “became a popular attraction in variety and vaudeville theaters in major cities across the United States. Motion pictures soon became starring attractions on the Vaudeville bill. Exhibitors could choose the films they wanted from the Edison inventory and sequence them in whatever order they wished.”
April 23—the day Thomas Edison showed movies on the Vitascope in Manhattan to a paying audience in Koster and Bial’s Music Hall—is one of them. Using light to cast images, the big, electrically-powered projector made making and showing movies both more possible and more popular.
Sources: Library of Congress, David Colbert, Thomas Edison: 10 Days, LA Daily Mirror.
Editor’s note: this is the first in a series focused on important historical dates. Can you think of a date which matters in the history of lighting? Tell us why–include the exact, full date and reasons—it should be considered for the Language of Lighting.
