Tag: Bar Room Scene (1894)

A Look into the Kinetoscope

Source: ‘A Look into the Kinetoscope’, The Salt Lake Herald, 3 September 1894, p. 1

Text: A LOOK INTO THE KINETOSCOPE

[From the Boston Herald]

I you have not looked into Edison’s kinetoscope delay not but plank down your nickels and behold the wonder of the age. Verily it makes the blood run hot and cold. Edison is well named the wizard; he is the great magician of science and we have grown somewhat accustomed to his inventions through daily and constant use, but when you look into this toy that represents the work of unfathomed genius the average man believes the time has come to get excited. Nothing that I had read about the kinetoscope gave any idea of it, and it is only by personal examination that is by seeing these human pictures of absolute events for one’s self that its marvelous effect can be appreciated. The fight in the bar room, the skirt dancing at Koster & Bial’s, Sandow’s exhibition and the cats’ boxing match are as real as life. If the pictures could be on a larger scale the pleasure would be enhanced, though effect of distance does not destroy the perfection of movement or lessen any detail. The soft fluttering drapery of the dancing girl, her graceful poses and the familiar high kick, are all there, and above the sound of the electricity one can imagine the voices, the aplause [sic], the music, and also maybe the squeak of belligerent cats! It is quite possible to believe, as Mr Edison says, that the time is not far away when a grand opera can be acted and sung in a box, under our very eyes. At all events the kinetoscope will preserve what has never been preserved before save in the word painting of variable writers.

Comment: The first Kinetoscope parlour opened to the public at 1155 Broadway, New York City on 14 April 1894. The films are Boxing Cats, Sandow, Bar Room Scene and possibly Carmencita (all USA 1894).

Links: Available on Chronicling America

The Kinetoscope

Source: ‘The Kinetoscope’, The Morning Post, 18 October 1894, p. 5

Text: Mr. F.Z. Maguire, the representative of Mr. Edison in Europe, last evening received a large number of visitors at a private view of Mr. Edison’s latest invention, the kinetoscope, which was held at No. 70, Oxford-street. Mr. Edison has devoted four years to the experiments which have led to the completion of the kinetoscope, an instrument which by presenting a series of photographs in rapid succession gives a continuous picture of moving objects. Among the scenes represented in the apparatus last evening were a blacksmith’s shop in which three men are at work, with all their movements as they strike the anvil realistically displayed, while the smoke from the furnace gradually ascends; Carmencita, the celebrated Spanish dancer, executing her graceful evolutions; Bertholdi, a female contortionist, going through her performance; a bar-room fight, and a cock-fight. The photographs are exhibited at the rate of 2,000 a minute on a continuous celluloid film 45ft. long. The pictures, which are all perfect in themselves, are magnified in the machine and illuminated by the electric light. The present exhibition, however, does not represent the degree of perfection to which Mr. Edison promises to carry his invention, and it suffers by the smallness of the pictures and the want of clearly defined light and shade as well as by the inconvenience of looking down into the instrument. The inventor intends in future developments to throw moving pictures of life-size figures on a screen, and by the aid of a perfected phonograph which can reproduce every vibration of the violin to perpetuate the voices concurrently with the gestures of orators and actors, and even to show entire scenes from operas and plays, with all the speeches and songs as well as the movements of the performers. The instruments at present exhibited are offered to the public at the price of £70 apiece. They can, however, only be regarded as an amusing toy and as a preliminary to the greater achievements that are promised in the future. Probably an improvement may be effected by reducing the rapidity of the display, for it is recognised in the science of optics that the human eye is incapable of appreciating more than eight impressions in a second, while Professor Tyndall places the number at only seven.

Comment: The Kinetoscope peepshow was introduced to the UK on 17 October 1894 at a press showing organised by Maguire & Baucus, Edison’s European agents, at 70 Oxford Street, London. There were ten machines on display, showing the Edison films Blacksmiths, Cock Fight, Annabelle Serpentine Dance, The Bar Room, Carmencita, Wrestling Match, Bertoldi and Barber Shop.