1. Some notable dates, facts, and figures in the early development of motion pictures and film adaptation:

2. 1878 – First sequential photographs by Eadward Muybridge. His experiments in serial photography have him now considered “the father of motion pictures.” (Roll your mouse over the image and click play to start animation.) To read about Muybridge: In brief: http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/motion-pictures/motion-pictures.php?cts=photography More extensive (with lots of cool video links): http://www.stephenherbert.co.uk/muybCOMPLEAT.htm

3. 1891– Thomas Edison patents the Kinetoscope This was a device allowing individual viewers to see very short films (the machine was limited to 50 ft. of film projected at approximately 40 frames per second). Though unwieldy, the device incorporated features that would be standard in future projection systems: 35mm film with perforations on the side to accept a sprocket mechanism. To see “Fred Ott’s Sneeze,” made for the Kinetoscope, the earliest surviving copyrighted motion picture, click here: "Fred Ott's Sneeze"

4. 1894 – Opening of first Kinetoscope parlor in New York City. Soon there were 60 around the country. Edison at first favored this format over projected images on an external screen because he believed single-viewing machines would prove more lucrative. 1895 – First means of film production and projection developed in America, France, and Germany. Americans were by no means the only people experimenting with various moving picture devices... (next slide, please... )

5. 1895 – Louis and August Lumière’s film “Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat.” (France) To see this film (50 seconds), click here: "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat" The piano, of course, is added. The lore has it that viewers were legitimately frightened by this film, fearing the train was about to come right off the screen. 1896 – Premiere of the Vitascope (originally “Phantoscope”-- not invented by Edison buy promoted by the Edison Company) in New York City. Six 20-second films are shown on a continuous loop. Within a year, several hundred Vitascopes are in use throughout the U.S.

6. 1902 – “A Trip to the Moon” by Georges Méliès (France)“A Trip to the Moon” First science fiction film, first with animation, a must see. The above link is to the second half of the film, which is the most interesting part (with added narration.) 1903 – Edwin S. Porter’s “The Great Train Robbery”“The Great Train Robbery” 1905 – First Nickelodeon (Pittsburgh, PA), offering roughly an hour’s worth of short films for a nickel. By 1910, there are an estimated 10,000 Nickelodeons in the U.S.

7. 1907+ – Developing emphasis on narrative film. ‘Cause, after all, movies about guys sneezing can take you only so far. Now we have to have stories, and the need for stories sparks the beginning of efforts at adaptation. 1908-1913 – D.W. Griffith’s short films for Biograph. Considered “the father of film technique” (at least in America), Griffith made hundreds of short films in this period (IMDB.com lists his total filmography at 535 titles), with a great many of these being adaptations from a variety of literary sources, including novels. You need to remember who this guy was because he’ll be coming up again...

8. 1910 (circa) – Film companies begin to settle in Hollywood, CA. The Nestor Film Company—first production company located specifically in Hollywood (1911), later incorporated into Universal Studios. 1911 – Italian production of Dante’s Inferno (68 min.), highly successful with U.S. audiences, helps affirm the public’s interest in longer films.

9. 1913 – La Société Film d’Art’s 2:48 version of Les Misérables (12 reels/14 min. each) The French Société Film d’Art was formed in 1908 for the express purpose of adapting the great classics of literature into film. 1914 – Opening of the 3,000-seat Strand theater in New York, the first modern movie palace.

10. 1915 – D.W. Griffith’s 3-hour-long The Birth of a Nation, based on Thomas Dixon’s novel The Clansman. Screen debut of Lillian Gish. (Plays in Boston for 6½ months.) Remember Griffith? “Father of film technique”? Several hundred shorts for Biograph? Well, this is his most famous movie—a groundbreaking technical achievement, and repulsively racist, based on a repulsively racist novel. About Reconstruction in the South after the Civil War and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. First motion picture ever shown at the White House (to President Woodrow Wilson). The entire film (at 3 hours) is available on YouTube, but at least watch a portion of it to get an idea of the film if you’ve not seen any of it before. Here’s one clip that’s indicative of the kind of racism the film traffics in: The Birth of a Nation (State House scene) To read about The Birth of a Nation’s run in Boston, click here: Birth of a Nation in Boston

11. 1919 – Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W. Griffith form United Artists. 1920 – 20,000 cinemas now open in the United States! 1921 – 854 feature films produced in Hollywood. (By comparison, the MPAA reports that 560 films were released in the U.S. and Canada in 2010.) 1923 – Walt Disney moves to Hollywood. At right: “Steamboat Willie” (1928)

12. 1924 – Numbers of films made in Europe: Germany (228), France (73), Great Britain (33), Austria (30), Sweden (16), Spain (10), Hungary (9), Poland (8), the Netherlands (6), Switzerland (3), Greece (1), Norway (1), Romania (1). That number for Germany should suggest the fact that, while considerably smaller than Hollywood, the German film industry was a formidable one. In the 1930s a great wave of Austrian and German filmmakers made their way to Hollywood, escaping Hitler and the Third Reich. They include Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Otto Preminger, Marlene Dietrich, and Peter Lorre. Force of Nature, Marlene Dietrich Writer/Director Billy Wilder

13. 1927 – October 6th premiere of The Jazz Singer—birth of the sound era. The End.