Movies: Thomas A. Edison

A documentary overview of the career of silent cinema pioneer Edwin S. Porter....

Three men hammer on an anvil and pass a bottle of beer around. Notable for being the first film in which a scene is being acted out....

The film expresses the history of oppression, discrimination, violence and hate in America. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short....

In this John Nesbitt's Passing Parade short, a look is taken at the problems of film preservation efforts in the 1930s and early 1940s....

“This film is remarkable in several respects. In the first place, it is full life-size. Secondly, it is the only accurate recent portrait of the great inventor. The scene is an actual one, showing Mr. Edison in working dress engaged in an interesting...

This is a film taken of the execution of Topsy, an elephant employed to help build Luna Park on Coney Island....

An Edison Kinetophone short presenting an on-stage minstrel company performing musical numbers and patter; made as part of Edison’s early synchronized sound demonstrations....

Experimental test footage from Edison’s earliest motion picture work, capturing camera trials, exposure studies, and mechanical movement. Likely filmed by Edison staff in the early 1890s, it survives today in the Library of Congress collection. The f...

By the time he died in 1931, Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most famous men in the world. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in history, Edison had achieved glory as the genius behind such revolutionary inventions as sound recordin...

On February 17, 1913, after many years of R+D, Thomas Alva Edison introduced the Edison Kinetophone to an enthusiastic New York audience. The Kinetophone was a fairly complex mechanical means of creating talking pictures. Unlike previous systems, in ...

This 1894 film depicts a staged “war council” featuring a group of Sioux men in traditional dress, seated in deliberation as Buffalo Bill Cody addresses them....

From Edison films catalog: One of the most peculiar customs of the Sioux Tribe is here shown, the dancers being genuine Sioux Indians, in full war paint and war costumes. 40 feet. 7.50. According to Edison film historian C. Musser, this film and othe...

A short Edison Kinetophone film, part of Edison’s early experiments in synchronizing sound and image. Distributed by General Film Company. (Plot, cast, and running time are not fully documented in surviving sources.)...

A political boss antagonizes his constituents when he delivers an oratory while being fed talking points from his daughter who is reading from the wrong newspaper....

The only known moving-image footage of the author, filmed at his home, Stormfield, in Redding, Connecticut. The silent short shows Twain walking about his estate, relaxing indoors with his daughters Clara and Jean. No known voice recording survives. ...

This film captures the departure of the 2nd Special Service Battalion, Canadian Infantry, from Quebec for the war in South Africa. Soldiers in campaign uniform march under a triumphal arch to the cheers of flag-waving crowds before proceeding to the ...

American Falls, from Incline R.R. (1896) is a brief silent actuality directed by James H. White and produced by Thomas A. Edison. Filmed from a tourist-friendly incline railway in early December 1896, it presents a striking view of the American Falls...

A comedy of a young man’s humiliating initiation into a woman-hating men’s club, The Five Jolly Bachelors. With Eddie Boulden and the Edison Quartet....

A short documentary capturing the officers and crew of the USS Brooklyn during a naval parade in Brooklyn, New York, on October 1, 1898, following the Spanish-American War. The film features the ship’s 300 Marines and the Marine Band, reflecting publ...

A group of Jewish men in Jerusalem perform a dance....