Hollywood Timeline: 1878 - 1909 | Story of the Movies

Hollywood Timeline: 1878 - 1909

Hollywood was not established as a filmmaking community until the 1910s. This section of the Story of the Movies Hollywood Timeline charts the key incidents, developments and milestones in the American film industry from 1878 to 1909 that laid its foundations.

Hollywood at the turn of the 20th century

Date	Event
June 1878	Eadweard Muybridge English photographer Eadweard Muybridge captures a series of images for American railroad tycoon Leland Stanford to settle a wager over whether all four of a galloping horse’s hooves leave the ground at the same time.
1880	George Eastman starts manufacturing photographic dry plates.
1884	George Eastman secures a patent for a transparent paper-backed photographic film.

1887
1^st February	Harvey Wilcox submits a detailed subdivision map to the County Recorder for 170 acres of land purchased in 1883, which he and his wife have christened ‘Hollywood.’

2^nd May	Episcopalian minister Hannibal Goodwin develops the use of celluloid as a base for photographic emulsion.

1888
November	John Carbutt presents his invention – celluloid – to the Photographic Society of Philadelphia and the Franklin Institute.
	W. K. L. Dickson Thomas Edison commissions his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson to invent a motion picture camera to serve as a visual accompaniment to the Phonograph

1889
	George Eastman manufactures rolls of celluloid film.

1891
20^th May	Edison demonstrates a prototype Kinetoscope, a peephole viewing device created by W. K. L. Dickson, to members of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs.
24^th August	Edison applies for patents for his Kinetoscope and Kinetograph, but neglects to apply for patents outside of the US.

1893
February	Construction of Edison’s ‘Black Maria’ studio is completed at West Orange, New Jersey.
April	Blacksmith Scene is filmed at Edison’s ‘Black Maria’ studio.
9^th May	Blacksmith Scene receives its first public screening at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences.
6^th October	W. K. L. Dickson deposits the first films made at the ‘Black Maria’ with the Library of Congress.

1894
7^th January	Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (aka Fred Ott’s Sneeze) is filmed.
9^th January	Each frame of Edison Kinetoscope Record of a Sneeze is copyrighted as a photograph at the US Library of Congress
5^th February	Jean Aimé Leroy claims to have projected two Kinetoscope films to a paying audience in New York
6^th April	The first Kinetoscopes are shipped from Edison’s laboratory to the Holland Brothers Kinetoscope Parlor at 1155 Broadway in New York
14^th April	The Holland Brothers’ Kinetoscope Parlor opens for business.
17^th May	The Holland Brothers open a second Kinetoscope Parlor in Chicago.
14^th June	W. K. L. Dickson films a boxing match between Michael Leonard and Jack Cushing for Gray and Otway Latham.
17^th July	Edison’s Kinetoscope film of Carmencita performing the Serpentine dance is banned in Newark, New Jersey.
August	The Latham’s Kinetoscope Exhibition Co. opens its first Kinetoscope Parlour in New York. Six expanded Kinetoscopes each show one round of the six-round fight filmed by W. K. L. Dickson in June.
7^th September	A staged fight between Jim Corbett and Pete Courtney is filmed.
21^st November	Herman Casler patents the Mutoscope.

1895
26^th March	Charles Francis Jenkins files a patent for the Phantoscope projector.
2^nd April	W. K. L. Dickson resigns from his position with Thomas Edison.
18^th December	Charles Francis Jenkins demonstrates his Phantoscope projector to the Franklin Institute.
30^th December 1895	The American Mutoscope Company, which will eventually become one of early American cinema’s most successful studios, is formed.

1896
	The Phantoscope projector Following the Lumière brothers’ successful projection of motion pictures in Paris on 28^th December 1895, Edison buys the patent to Thomas Armat’s modified version of the Phantoscope projector and markets it as the Vitascope.
15^th January	Businessmen Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon negotiate with Edison to construct Thomas Armat’s Phantoscope projector.
9^th April 1896	Colonel William N. Selig founds the Multoscope and Film Co. (later to become Selig Polyscope) in Chicago.
April 23^rd 1896	The first public demonstration of projected movies using Edison’s Vitascope is staged at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall in New York City.
11^th May	The Lathams unveil their new, improved Eidoloscope.
15^th June	Edison’s The Kiss, a re-enactment of a scene from John McNally’s hit stage play starring May Irwin and John C. Rice is released.
26^th July	William T ‘Pop’ Rock and Walter J. Wainwright open the 400-seat Vitascope Hall, the USA’s first business exclusively devoted to projecting films, at 623 Canal Street in New Orleans.
14^th September	American Mutoscope & Biograph demonstrate their Biograph to an audience for the first time at the Alvin Theater in Pittsburgh.
19^th October	Edisonia Hall, the first building constructed specifically for projecting motion pictures, opens in Buffalo, New York.

1897
March	J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith found the American Vitagraph Company.
May	Enoch J. Rector’s The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight is released. Filmed in an early widescreen format called Veriscope, it runs for over 100 minutes, making it the world’s first feature-length film.
15^th May	Siegmund Lubin’s first film, Unveiling of the Washington Monument is released for peep-show exhibition.
May	The Burglar on the Roof, Vitagraph’s first fiction film, is filmed. There is some doubt over co-founder Albert E. Smith’s claim it was the first film shot by Vitagraph as it was not released until 1898.
24^th July	The Dingley Bill, which will result in a US embargo on the Lumieres’ Cinematograph, is passed.
5^th August	Admiral Cigarettes, the first filmed advertisement, is lodged for copyright at the Library of Congress.
31^st August	The patent is finally issued for Edison’s Kinetoscope.
22^nd November	The Horitz Passion Play premieres at the Philadelphia Academy of Music.
	American Mutoscope & Biograph Company’s The Haverstraw Tunnel, the first ‘Phantom Ride’ film, is released.

1898
15^th February	The sinking of the USS Maine and the ensuing Spanish-American War revive flagging interest in cinema as filmmakers film re-enactments of key incidents in response to anti-Spanish sentiment aroused by the yellow press.
April	Biograph cameraman W. K. L. Dickson films Pope Leo XIII in the Vatican.
	Edison brings legal proceedings against Vitagraph and Biograph in an attempt to secure a monopoly over the film industry.

1899
3^rd November	The World Heavyweight Championship bout between James J. Jeffries and Tom Sharkey marks the first fight to be filmed under artificial light. Although Biograph have the contract, Vitagraph also covertly film the match.
	Siegmund Lubin opens his first theatre, the Cineograph, in Philadelphia


1900
May	American Mutoscope & Biograph release Sherlock Holmes Baffled, the earliest known screen appearance of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective.
November	Edwin S. Porter joins the Edison Manufacturing Company and is soon put in charge of motion picture production
	William Selig makes Chicago Stockyards for meat packing magnate Philip Danforth Armour using stage lights borrowed from a local theatrical company.


1901
10^th January	The licence agreement between Edison and Vitagraph is terminated by Edison when Vitagraph fail to pay a 10% royalty on exhibition income.
January	Production of films at Edison’s ‘Black Maria’ stops after the company acquires a glass-roofed studio in New York.
February - March	Vaudeville managers turn to filmmakers to provide entertainment when the White Rats, the theatrical performers union, organise a strike of their members.
15^th July	Thomas Edison wins his legal battle with Biograph over patent infringements. Henry Marvin of Biograph immediately appeals Judge Hoyt Henry Wheeler’s ruling and wins an injunction.
	Siegmund Lubin moves his motion picture manufacturing operation to Germany following Edison’s legal victory over Biograph, fearing he is next in the firing line.


1902
10^th March	In the case of Edison v American Mutoscope Company, the US Court of Appeal rules that Edison’s Kinetograph patent does not give him control of all motion picture technology.
16^th April	Thomas Lincoln Tally opens the Electric Theater, the first permanent movie theatre, in Los Angeles (some sources cite 2^nd April).
	Henry Miles opens the first film exchange, renting prints to exhibitors instead of selling them outright.
	Life of an American Fireman (1902) Edwin S. Porter films Life of an American Fireman. He is inspired to experiment with creating a continuous narrative after seeing Georges Méliès Le voyage dans la Lune, which Edison duped in October 1902.

1903
January	Edwin S. Porter’s Life of an American Fireman is released.
January	Edison release Electrocuting an Elephant, footage of the electrocution of Topsy, a circus elephant in her twenties.
January	Gaston Melies opens a US distribution office and printing laboratory for brother Georges’ Star Films at 204 East 38^th Street in New York with the aid of his son Paul.
February	Hungarian immigrant furrier Adolph Zukor opens a penny arcade called 'The Bazaar' in New York.
April	The US Court of Appeal for the Third Circuit rules that filmmakers can copyright complete films instead of separately registering each frame.
May	The Biograph studios, the first in the country to use artificial light, go into full operation at 11 East 14^th Street in New York.
May	Siegmund Lubin appears in his version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and opens his first film exchange.
22^nd August	Gaston Melies releases his first production, Reliance: Shamrock III
21^st September	The first two known Westerns – Kit Carson and The Pioneers – are copyrighted.
September	Edwin S. Porter’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is released.
September	Biograph switches to the industry standard 35mm film gauge and introduces a three-blade shutter that greatly enhances projection quality.
November	Marcus Loew opens a number of penny arcades in New York and Cincinatti.
November	Biograph’s The Escaped Lunatic is the first US film to be structured around a chase.
December	Edwin S. Porter’s The Great Train Robbery is released.
	The four Warner brothers open an arcade called the Cascade in Pittsburgh.
	Harry Chandler and Moses Sherman buy Harvey Wilcox’s Hollywood real estate development for $3 million.
	The film rental business expands, with the pioneering Miles Brothers facing competition from the likes of Percival Waters’ Kinetograph Co. in New York, Eugene Cline & Co. and George Kleine in Chicago.
	Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew enter into a partnership with Mitchell Mark, owner of a chain of movie theatres, to form the Automatic Vaudeville Company.
	Edison’s Black Maria studio is demolished.Edison’s Black Maria studio is demolished.


1904
13^th January	Photographing a Female Crook, Wallace McCutcheon’s 40-second film for American Mutoscope & Biograph, features a shot that tracks into a close-up.
May	Hale's Touring Car George Hale of the Kansas City Fire Brigade introduces ‘Hale’s Touring Car,’ a new novelty, at the St. Louis Fair. Sitting in a mock-up of a train carriage, the audience watches the passing scenery of locations from around the world.
10^th July	Oskar Messter shoots films with a synchronised soundtrack at the St. Louis Olympics.
August	Biograph’s The Moonshiner is one of the first films to make consistent use of intertitles.
14^th November	Marcus Loew founds the People’s Vaudeville Company.
	Eugene Lauste builds a sound-on-film system using separate films for picture and sound.
	Filmmakers start moving away from shooting entirely from eye-level and start filming from an angle.
	Siegmund Lubin unsuccessfully attempts to market sound movies
	William Fox purchases a Brooklyn penny arcade called The Automat from J. Stuart Blackton,.

1905
1^st June	Adolph Zukor opens a ‘Hale’s Tour’ show in Union Square, New York.
19^th June	A typical nickelodeon Harry Davis and John P. Harris open the first nickelodeon on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh. The first film shown at the 96-seat storefront theatre is The Great Train Robbery. By May 1907 there are an estimated 2,500-3,500 nickelodeons in the United States.
16^th December	Sime Silverman publishes the first 16-page issue of the trade entertainment paper Variety.
	Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew form Loew's consolidated theatre chain.
	Edison cause disruption at Biograph by luring away some of their most creative talent. Biograph also lose their contract for the Keith Vaudeville Circuit to the Kinetograph Film Exchange, a company with links to Edison.
	Vitagraph begin renting films to exchanges instead of selling them and commits to making story films.
	Massachusetts introduces a law setting safety standards in motion picture theatres.
	Biograph become the first studio to use Peter Cooper-Hewitt's mercury lamps to enable filming indoors. The 4ft tubular lamps emit a distinctive blue-green colour.


1906
24^th February	Carl Laemmle opens the White Front Theater, “the coolest 5c theatre in Chicago,” at 909 Milwaukee Avenue.
6^th April	J. Stuart Blackton’s stop-motion animation Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is released.
26^th April	Views and Film Index, the first trade paper devoted solely to the film business, is published for the first time.
May (approx)	William Fox dispenses with the arcade attractions at 700 Broadway, Brooklyn and focuses exclusively on projecting moving pictures.
June	Biograph construct a new film stage at their East 14^th Street studio.
23^rd July	Harry E. Aitken and John R. Freuler found the Western Film Exchange in Milwaukee for the purpose of renting movies to theatres. It becomes the centre of the exchange industry with fifteen exchanges controlling 80% of the US film rental business.
October	Carl Laemmle opens the Laemmle Film Exchange.
November	Vitagraph opens its new film studio in Greenfield (now Midwood), Brooklyn.
	Nickelodeons spread rapidly across the country.
	The Keith Organization vaudeville circuit begins converting some of its vaudeville theatres into nickelodeons.
	Edison’s projectors enjoy a 131% increase in sales over the previous year. At $135 each, they generate sales of over $182,000.
	A shortage of American-made films due to the boom in nickelodeons allows foreign producers like Pathé to increase their sales to the US market.
	Florence Turner starts work as a wardrobe mistress and occasional extra. She will become famous as The Vitagraph Girl.


1907
19^th January	Variety publishes it’s first film review.
February	Gilbert M. Anderson George K. Spoor and Gilbert M. “Broncho Billy” Anderson form the Essanay Co. Its named is derived from the men’s initials – S & A. The new studio is based at 501 Wells St., Chicago, and its first picture is entitled An Awful Skate or The Hobo on Rollers.
March	Daniel H. Bell and Albert S Howell form The Bell & Howell Co., America’s first manufacturer of cameras and lenses, in Chicago. Their first product is the Kinedrome projector.
12^th April	George Kleine, Samuel Long and Frank Marion form the Kalem Company. Their first film is The Runaway Sleighbelle.
July	Edison’s film production moves from New York to a purpose-built studio in the Bronx.
October	Jeremiah Kennedy, a consultant engineer, assumes the position of director of Biograph. He lays off many of the studio’s staff in an attempt to ease its financial difficulties.
November	Chicago passes America’s first local censorship ordinance “prohibiting the exhibition of obscene and immoral pictures commonly shown in Mutoscopes, Kinetoscopes, Cinematographs and penny arcades.”
7^th December	Kalem’s Ben Hur, directed by Sidney Olcott, is released
	E. E. Norton develops a sound film system.
	After they are refused membership to the Variety Artists Federation, film projectionists form their own trade union, The Bioscope Operator’s Association.
	The Selig Polyscope Co. makes the first westerns actually filmed in the real west.
	The Saturday Evening Post reports that nickelodeon attendance has reached 2 million people a day.
	Louis B. Mayer buys his first nickelodeon.
	William Fox founds the Greater New York Film Exchange.
	Siegmund Lubin moves his studio to ‘Lubin Building’ in the centre of Philadelphia’s business district.
	Edison projector sales reach $481,000, a 130% increase over the previous year.
	D. W. Griffith enters the film industry as an actor for the Edison Co at a wage of $5 per day.
	Vitagraph become the major American movie producer and organises film production by assigning responsibility for all aspects of the making of the film to a director.
	The Warner Brothers open the Duquesne Amusement Supply Company, a film exchange, in Pittsburgh.


1908
5^th February	Henry Marvin, Vice President of Biograph, buys the patent to the Latham Loop.
20^th February	Five days after replacing William E. Gilmore as Edison’s Vice President, Frank L Dyer, the inventor’s lawyer and biographer, imposes a $5,000 annual license fee on film distributors.
1^st March	Edison forms the Association of Edison Licensees to regulate film distribution. Biograph refuse to join.
5^th May	Kalem’s Ben Hur is the subject of legal action by the estate of author Lew Wallace after the film company fails to acquire the rights to the story. In a landmark decision, Kalem lose the case and are forced to withdraw the film from distribution pending an appeal.
6^th May	Mack Sennett makes his first screen appearance (alongside D. W.Griffith) in Wallace McCutcheon’s The Sculptor’s Nightmare for Biograph.
May	The National Cameraphone company opens a factory and studio in New York for synchronised sound apparatus.
14^th July	D. W. Griffith directs his wife Linda Arvidsen in Adventures of Dollie, his directorial debut. The film opens on this day at the Union Square Theatre in New York.
July	Gilbert M. "Broncho Billy" Anderson takes an Essanay unit to Colorado to film westerns.
17^th August	D. W. Griffith becomes Biograph’s main director at a salary of $50 per week following the departure of Wallace McCutcheon.
9^th September	The Motion Picture Patents Company, a Cartel formed to end the legal battles that have plagued the industry since its birth, is incorporated under the laws of the State of Maine. Membership comprises of Biograph, Vitagraph, Selig, Kalem, Essanay, Lubin, George Kleine, Pathé and Méliès. Its intention is to prevent any organisations outside the MPPC from producing or selling films in the US without making a payment to the Trust.
19^th September	David Horsley’s Centaur Film Company of Bayonne releases A Cowboy Escapade, it’s first film.
Winter	A unit from the Kalem Company temporarily relocates to Florida to escape the poor light of the New York winter. Its first film, A Florida Feud or Love in the Everglades is released in December.
18^th December	The MPPC begins issuing licenses under the pooled patents arrangement.
24^th December	New York Mayor George McClellan authorises the inspection and subsequent closure of all the approximately 500 nickelodeons operating in the city to assess safety standards. An injunction granted by Judge Gaynor allows them to re-open immediately.
	Edison resumes research into sound films.
	Carl Laemmle imports the Synchroscope sound film system from Germany to sell to theatres. Its price quickly falls from $750 to as little as $395 due to poor sales.
	The Balaban Brothers, Barney and AJ, open the 100-seat Kedzie nickelodeon in Chicago.
	Kodak agrees to only sell film stock to MPPC members.
	In this year there are an estimated 8,000 nickelodeons in the country.
	D. W. Griffith hires Florence Lawrence to be his leading lady at $25 a week.
	The Motion Picture Machine Operators Union is formed.
	Eastman-Kodak introduces acetate film.


1909
January	Trade paper The Nickelodeon is first published. It will be retitled Motography in 1911.
8^th February	D. W. Griffith directs his wife, Linda Arvidsen, in Edgar Allan Poe, which is released today.
12^th March	Carl Laemmle Cinema owner and distributor Carl Laemmle and director William Rainous form Independent Motion Pictures, a breakaway company from Vitagraph, in response to the MPPC restrictions, and adopt an imp as their emblem.
20^th March	Independent filmmakers excluded from Edison’s Motion Pictures Patents Company form a rival cartel.
25^th March	The National Board of Censorship, established by the People’s Institute and Dr. Charles Sprague Smith in New York, holds its first meeting.
14^th April	Distributors Adam Kessel and Charles Baumann found Bison Life Films in New York. Their first film is Disinherited Son’s Loyalty is released in May.
April	Former scrap metal dealer Louis B. Mayer and Nat Gordon found the Gordon-Mayer cinema circuit.
5^th June	Carl Laemmle announces he is to produce films in reaction to the formation of – and his exclusion from – the MPPC. Originally named Yankee, he quickly changes his new production company’s name to the Independent Moving Picture Company of America (IMP).
10^th June	Three days after the release of her screen debut The Violin Maker of Cremona, Mary Pickford again appears for D. W. Griffith in The Lonely Villa.
15^th June	Independent filmmakers reach a secret agreement with Eastman-Kodak for supplies of safety film.
29^th July	The Heart of a Race Tout, the first film to be shot at Selig Polyscope’s new studio on the site of a Chinese laundry at 7^th Street in downtown Los Angeles, is released.
1^st August	Edwin S. Porter resigns as head of Edison, after reaching a production output of one 15-minute film every three days, to found Rex Motion Pictures with William H. Swanson.
8^th September	G. M. Anderson, accompanied by cameraman Jesse Robbins, moves his Essanay film company west, finally settling in Niles, California.
11^th September	The Film Renters Protective Association is established to combat the threat of the MPPC.
18^th September	Vitagraph release the first reel of their four-reel version of Les Miserables, believing the public will not watch a film lasting over an hour.
10^th October	D. W. Griffith’s Pippa Passes, starring Mary Pickford, becomes the first film to receive a notice in the New York Times due to its technical innovations.
October	Powers Picture Company is founded.
25^th November	The first film censorship action on a local scale is taken in the US.
November	Actors working for theatrical producers Klaw and Erlanger are forbidden from appearing in films.
November	The New York Motion Picture Company begins production in California.
4^th December	Vitagraph release the first part of their five-reel The Life of Moses.
11^th December	Kinemacolor is exhibited for the first time at Madison Square Garden in New York.
	American Mutoscope and Biograph Company changes its name to American Biograph Company.
	Vitagraph issues its first multi-reel films.
	Champion Film Company build a studio in the rural area of Coytesville, New Jersey to avoid the attention of Edison’s MPPC.
	Siegmund Lubin sells his chain of theatres to form the Lubin Manufacturing Company, and begins building a new studio in North Philadelphia.

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