An Early Film

W.K.L. Dickson (1860-1935)
Souvenir strip of the Edison Kinetoscope
Paper prints on printed
card stock, March 6, 1894
Motion Picture, Broadcasting &
Recorded Sound Division
Copyright deposit, 1894 (128A)

In the late 1880s Thomas Edison predicted that he would invent a new technology to record motion and do "for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear." He set his assistant, Englishman W.K.L. Dickson, to develop separate devices to record moving image (the "Kinetograph") and play them back (the "Kinetoscope"). When reliable film stock became available in 1893, commercial development of movies took off. Popular stage performers came to the Edison labs to be filmed, including Eugene Sandow, "The Modern Hercules," whose display of muscles, gymnastics, and flesh was popular with variety show audiences of the day.