In the early part of 1893 it was decided to market commercially the peep-show motion picture devices. After a year’s postponement, the Chicago World’s Fair was scheduled to open in the Spring of 1893 and this was thought an ideal place for the debut of the apparatus. In January of 1893 the famous “Black Maria” Edison Studio was constructed chiefly of tar paper at a cost of about $600, and the first commercial films made. Dickson was producer, director, cameraman and laboratory expert. Fred Ott, a laboratory mechanic, and his sneeze were among the first actors and film “acts.” Other subjects included dancers and similar entertainment subjects of a vaudeville character, together with scenic views.
The debut of the projection apparatus had been heralded long before it actually arrived. The World’s Columbian Exposition Illustrated, published for the Chicago Fair of 1893, said:
Edison will show his kineto-graph. This machine is a combination, first of the camera and phonograph and then the phonograph and Stereopticon (magic lantern projector). By means of this machine, when a man makes a speech the phonograph takes his words. Connected electrically and in synchronism with the phonograph is a camera which takes pictures of the speaker at the rate of forty-seven per second on a long transparent slip. This is developed and fixed and then placed in a stereopticon which is also in electrical synchronism with the phonograph. The stereopticon shows these photographs on the screen at a rate of forty-seven per second, while the phonograph reproduces the words, and thus a life-like representation of the speaker is given, with his words, actions and gestures precisely as he delivered the speech in the first instance.
Eastman Kodak
EASTMAN and EDISON. George Eastman and Thomas A. Edison, the two greatest American contributors to the practical development of motion pictures, at a meeting in 1928.
Edison Archives, 1894
KINETOSCOPE PARLOR, presenting Edison’s peep-hole viewer, opened at 1155 Broadway on April 14, 1894. Subsequent showings in London and Paris inspired European inventors.
Edison’s projection apparatus was not perfected by the time of the Fair or indeed for several years afterwards. Even the peep-show Kinetoscope machines had not been manufactured in sufficient number for exhibition there. The mechanic on the job was reported to have spent too much time at the local bar instead of working in the West Orange laboratory. During the Fair Edison’s agents waited for the first shipment of the Kinetoscopes but none arrived in time.