text:
1909 in film

The year 1909 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * Carl Laemmle founds the Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP).
 * Selig Polyscope Company establish the first permanent film studio in Los Angeles in Edendale, Los Angeles.
 * The New York Motion Picture Company is founded and also open a film studio in Edendale. The studio is later used by Mack Sennett's Keystone Studios and then Mascot Pictures, which become part of Republic Pictures.
 * February 4 – The Paris Film Congress begins, an attempt by leading European producers to form a cartel similar to that of the Motion Picture Patents Company in the United States.
 * February 26 – Kinemacolor is shown to the public for the first time in the Palace Theatre in London.
 * March 16 – Charles Urban forms the Natural Color Kinematograph Company.
 * May 12 – Mr. Flip is released and is the first film to feature someone being hit in the face with a pie.
 * May 23 – The first news cinema, The Daily Bioscope, opens in London.
 * June 17 – In the Sultan's Power is the first film ever completely made in Los Angeles, California. It is filmed by director Francis Boggs.
 * October 25 – IMP release their first film, Hiawatha, based on the 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
 * November 5 - A Nature Movie by Arthur C. Pillsbury using film to explore the wonders of Yosemite. This first showing was for John Muir, a friend, and associate of Pillsbury's. Included was footage of the Hetch Hetchy. This film was then shown for the 1910 season at the Pillsbury Studio in Yosemite, advertised using postcards.
 * December 2 – Matsunosuke Onoe, who will become the first superstar of Japanese cinema, appears in his first film, Goban Tadanobu.
 * December 20 – James Joyce opens the Volta Cinematograph, the first cinema in Dublin.

J. Stuart Blackton

 * Oliver Twist
 * The Judgment of Solomon
 * The Life of Moses
 * The Life of Napoleon
 * A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Charles Kent and J. Stuart Blackton
 * Les Misérables, directed by J. Stuart Blackton. A proto-feature film, or many short-films (in this case 4) that when combined can be seen as one feature film.
 * Princess Nicotine; or, The Smoke Fairy

D. W. Griffith

 * At the Altar
 * A Corner in Wheat
 * The Country Doctor, starring Mary Pickford
 * The Curtain Pole, directed by D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett (uncredited)
 * The Death Disc: A Story of the Cromwellian Period
 * The Drive for a Life
 * A Drunkard's Reformation
 * Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven
 * Fools of Fate
 * The Golden Louis
 * The Hessian Renegades
 * Lady Helen's Escapade
 * The Lonely Villa
 * The Red Man's View
 * Resurrection
 * The Sealed Room, starring Mary Pickford
 * The Suicide Club, directed by D. W. Griffith (U.S.)
 * Those Awful Hats
 * A Trap for Santa Claus

Georges Méliès

 * The Count's Wooing
 * The Diabolical Tenant (aka The Diabolical Lodger), directed by George Melies (French)
 * The Doctor's Secret, directed by George Melies (French)
 * Fortune Favors the Brave, directed by George Melies (French)
 * Le papillon fantastique

Others

 * The Adventures of Lieutenant Rose
 * The Airship Destroyer (originally titled Der Luftkrieg Der Zukunft, also titled "The Aerial Torpedo", "The Battle of the Clouds" {UK} and "The Battle in the Clouds" {US}), directed by Walter R. Booth
 * The Ancient Roman (made in Italy)
 * Ballad of a Witch, directed by Luigi Maggi (made in Italy)
 * The Bewitched Manor House (French/ Pathe)
 * Bluebeard, directed by J. Searle Dawley for Thomas Edison, starred Charles Ogle
 * The Bogey Woman (French/ Pathe)
 * The Butcher's Dream (French)
 * Capturing the North Pole, features Baron Munchausen (British/ Urban-Eclipse Films)
 * The Cat That Was Changed Into a Woman, directed by Louis Feuillade (French)
 * The Convict Guardian's Nightmare (French)
 * The Cowboy Millionaire, directed by Francis Boggs and Otis Turner
 * Dance of Fire (Pathe)
 * Dante's Inferno, directed by Giuseppe de Liguoro, starring Salvatore Papa (Italian); ran 59 minutes
 * The Defeat of Satan (French/ Pathe)
 * The Devil (Edison Co.) adaptation of the play starring George Arliss
 * Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by August Blom, starring Alwin Neuss and Oda Alstrup; made in Denmark for Nordisk Films
 * Don Juan Tenorio, directed by Enrique Rosas (made in Mexico)
 * Doomed (French/ Pathe)
 * The Egyptian Mystery (Edison)
 * Electric Transformations, directed by Percy Stow (British/ Clarendon)
 * Entrevista de los Presidentes Díaz-Taft (Mexico), a documentary directed by the Alva Brothers
 * Faust, directed by J. Searle Dawley and Edwin S. Porter for Thomas Edison
 * The Ferryman's Sweetheart (Gaumont)
 * The Fitzsimmons-Bill Lang Fight
 * The Forbidden Fruit (Pathe)
 * Gertie the Dinosaur, animated cartoon by Winsor McKay
 * Goddess of the Sea
 * The Grey Lady (aka The Grey Dame), directed by Viggo Larsen, starring Viggo Larsen as Sherlock Holmes (Denmark)
 * Hansel and Gretel
 * The Haunted Hotel (French/ Pathe)
 * The Haunted Man, introduced the "doppelganger" theme, similar to The Student of Prague (Germany/ Duskes Film)
 * Her Dolly's Revenge (French/ Lux)
 * Hiawatha, directed by William V. Ranous based on the 1855 poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the first film produced by Carl Laemmle's Independent Moving Pictures.
 * The Hunchback, directed by Van Dyke Brooke for Vitagraph; unauthorized remake of the 1906 film Esmeralda
 * The Imp of the Bottle (Thomas Edison), based on the story by Robert Louis Stevenson
 * The Invisible Thief, directed by Segundo de Chomon and Ferdinand Zecca (French); first adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel The Invisible Man
 * Les Joyeux Microbes, directed by Émile Cohl
 * The Last Look (Pathe)
 * Lucrece Borgia (French)
 * Lunatics in Power (Thomas Edison Co.), based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe called The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether
 * Macbeth, directed by André Calmettes
 * The Man Monkey (Pathe)
 * The Man Who Laughs (French), based on the famous novel by Victor Hugo
 * The Marvelous Pearl (made in Italy)
 * Mephisto and the Maiden, directed by Frank Boggs
 * The Mirror of Life (French/ Pathe)
 * Miss Faust (French/ Pathe)
 * Mr. Flip, directed by Gilbert M. 'Broncho Billy' Anderson
 * A Modern Dr. Jekyll, produced by William Selig
 * The Moonstone, produced by William Selig, based on the novel by Wilkie Collins
 * Mother Goose (Edison Co.)
 * The Mummy of the King Ramses directed by Gerard Bourgeois (French)
 * Mystery of Edwin Drood, directed by Arthur Gilbert (British), based on Charles Dickens' novel
 * Mystery of the Lama Convent, directed by Viggo Larsen (Denmark)
 * Nerone, directed by Luigi Maggi
 * The New Jonah (Pathe)
 * The Nymphs' Bath (French/ Gaumont)
 * The Old Shoemaker (French/ Gaumont), based on The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
 * The Oriental Mystic (Vitagraph, U.S.)
 * Papa Gaspard; or, The Ghost of the Rocks
 * Phaedra (French/ Pathe) featured a sea monster
 * The Phantom Sirens
 * The Pit and the Pendulum, directed by Henri Desfontaines (French/ Warwick), based on the famous story by Edgar Allan Poe
 * The Princess and the Fisherman, directed by Louis Feuillade (French)
 * Revenge of the Ghosts, animated cartoon directed by Emil Cohl (French)
 * Satan's Smithy, directed by Segundo de Chomon (French)
 * Shooting in the Haunted Woods, directed by Louis Feuillade (French)
 * The Spirit of the Lake (fantasy film made in Italy); it was followed by a sequel called The Legend of the Lake in 1911
 * The Suicide Club, directed by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset (French)
 * The Sword and the King (U.S./ Vitagraph)
 * Talked to Death (Lubin)
 * Teddy Roosevelt in Africa, directed by Cherry Kearton
 * Tis Now the Very Witching Time of Night, produced by Thomas Edison
 * The Ugliest Queen on Earth (French/ Gaumont)
 * Viy (aka The Vij), directed by Vasilii Gonmcharov (Russian)
 * The Wild Ass's Skin (French/ Pathe) based on the story by Balzac
 * The Witch
 * The Witch's Cavern (Selig Polyscope)
 * The Yiddisher Boy

Births

 * January 1 – Dana Andrews, actor (died 1992)
 * January 3 – Victor Borge, musician, actor (died 2000)
 * January 8 - Willy Millowitsch, actor (died 1999)
 * January 15 – Gene Krupa, musician, actor (died 1973)
 * January 22 – Ann Sothern, actress (died 2001)
 * January 24 – Ann Todd, actress (died 1993)
 * January 29 – Alan Marshal, actor (died 1961)
 * February 2 – Frank Albertson, actor (died 1964)
 * February 6 – Aino Talvi, Estonian actress (d. 1992)
 * February 9
 * Carmen Miranda, singer, actress (died 1955)
 * Heather Angel, actress (died 1986)
 * February 11
 * Max Baer – boxer, actor (died 1959)
 * Joseph L. Mankiewicz – director, screenwriter, producer (died 1993)
 * February 16
 * Hugh Beaumont, actor, director, writer (died 1982)
 * Jeffrey Lynn, actor (died 1995)
 * March 19 – Louis Hayward, actor (died 1995)
 * March 26 – Chips Rafferty, actor (died 1971)
 * April 4 – Bobby Connelly, child actor (died 1922)
 * April 22– Ralph Byrd, actor (died 1952)
 * April 29 – Tom Ewell, actor (died 1994)
 * May 4 – Howard Da Silva, actor, director (died 1986)
 * May 15 – James Mason, actor (died 1984)
 * May 16 – Margaret Sullavan, actress (died 1960)
 * May 30 – Benny Goodman, musician, actor (died 1986)
 * June 7 – Jessica Tandy, actress (died 1994)
 * June 8 – Robert Carson, actor (died 1979)
 * June 14 – Burl Ives, actor (died 1995)
 * June 20 – Errol Flynn, actor (died 1959)
 * June 26- Wolfgang Reitherman, director, producer, animator (died 1985)
 * July 1 – Madge Evans, actress (died 1981)
 * July 11
 * Irene Hervey, actress (died 1998)
 * John 'Dusty' King, actor, singer (died 1987)
 * July 12 – Curly Joe DeRita, actor (died 1993)
 * July 23 – Helen Martin, American actress (died 2000)
 * July 24 - Sydney Bromley, English character actor (died 1987)
 * August 25
 * Ruby Keeler, singer, actress (died 1993)
 * Michael Rennie, actor (died 1971)
 * August 26 – Jim Davis, American actor (died 1981)
 * September 7 – Elia Kazan, director (died 2003)
 * September 27 - Amerigo Tot, Hungarian actor (died 1984)
 * October 6 – Robert Carson, screenwriter (died 1983)
 * October 20 – Carla Laemmle, actress (died 2014)
 * October 29 – Douglass Montgomery, actor (died 1966)
 * November 11 – Robert Ryan, actor (died 1973)
 * November 26 – Frances Dee, actress (died 2004)
 * December 9 – Douglas Fairbanks Jr., actor (died 2000)
 * December 12 – Karen Morley, actress (died 2003)
 * December 20 – Diane Ellis, actress (died 1930)
 * December 22 - Patricia Hayes, English character actress (died 1998)

Deaths

 * January 27 – Benoît-Constant Coquelin, actor, Cyrano de Bergerac (born 1841)
 * September 4 – Clyde Fitch, author & playwright whose works have been adapted into films. (born 1865)

Film debuts

 * Fatty Arbuckle – Ben's Kid (as Roscoe Arbuckle)
 * Ethel Clayton – Justified (short)
 * Dolores Costello (as a child) – A Midsummer Night's Dream
 * Helene Costello (as a child) – Les Misérables (Part I) (short)
 * Marie Dressler – Marie Dressler (short)
 * Francis Ford – The Stolen Wireless
 * Annette Kellerman – The Bride of Lammermoor: A Tragedy of Bonnie Scotland
 * James Kirkwood – The Heart of an Outlaw (short)
 * Florence La Badie – The Politician's Love Story
 * Tom Mix – The Cowboy Millionaire
 * Mary Pickford – Mrs. Jones Entertains
 * Billy Quirk – The Heart of an Outlaw
 * William A. Russell – Tag Day (short)
 * William Stowell – The Cowboy Millionaire
 * Blanche Sweet – A Man with Three Wives
 * Rose Tapley – The Way of the Cross (short)
 * Clara Kimball Young – Washington Under the American Flag (short)

title: 1909 in film


text:
1908 in film

The year 1908 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * July 3 - Malhabour Theater, the first film house in Iloilo City was opened to the public.
 * July 14 – D. W. Griffith becomes a director at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in New York City. Between 1908 and 1913, Griffith will direct nearly 500 films starting with the release of The Adventures of Dollie.
 * October 28 – The Russian Film Industry begins with the release of Russia's first fictional narrative film Stenka Razin.
 * November 18 – Release in France of The Assassination of the Duke of Guise (La Mort du duc de Guise), the first film with a screenplay by an eminent man of letters, the playwright Henri Lavedan; it is also directed by two men of the theatre, Charles Le Bargy and André Calmettes, features actors of the Comédie-Française, and is accompanied by a score from Saint-Saëns.
 * December - Thomas Edison forms the Motion Picture Patents Company, with goals of controlling production and distribution, raising theater admission prices, cooperating with censorship bodies, and preventing film stock from getting into the hands of nonmember producers.
 * Pathé invents the newsreel that was shown in cinemas prior to a feature film.

Films released in 1908

 * The Adventures of Dollie, directed by D. W. Griffith
 * After Many Years
 * Antony and Cleopatra, directed by J. Stuart Blackton and Charles Kent
 * L'Arlésienne, directed by Albert Capellani
 * The Assassination of the Duke of Guise
 * Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bette) (French/ Pathe)
 * Beauty of the Sleeping Woods, directed by Segundo de Chomon (French/ Pathe), based on the story of Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault
 * Betrayed by a Handprint, directed by D. W. Griffith
 * The Bloodstone, produced by Siegmund Lubin
 * The Call of the Wild
 * The Castle Ghosts (Italian film)
 * The Cat's Revenge (French)
 * Cave of the Spooks, directed by Segundo de Chomon (French)
 * A Christmas Carol (Essanay Film Co.)
 * Cupid's Prank, directed by Edwin S. Porter
 * The Devil, directed by D. W. Griffith for Thomas Edison Co., starring Harry Solter, Claire McDowell and Mack Sennett
 * The Gambler and the Devil (Vitagraph)
 * Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, produced by William N. Selig, reissued as A Modern Dr. Jekyll; first film adaptation of the 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novel
 * Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, directed by Sidney Olcott for Kalem Films, starring Frank Oakes Rose, this was the 2nd ever film adaptation of the eponymous 1886 Robert Louis Stevenson novel
 * The Doctor's Experiment (French)
 * The Dog And His Various Merits, produced by Pathé
 * Don Juan Tenorio, directed by Ricardo de Banos and Alberto Marro (made in Spain)
 * Dream of an Opium Fiend, directed by George Melies
 * Dreams of Toyland, directed by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper
 * A L'Ecu d'Or ou la bonne auberge, a French film regarded as one of the first pornographic films
 * Excursion To The Moon, directed by Segundo de Chomón
 * The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays
 * The Fairy's Sword, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon (British)
 * A Faithless Friend, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon (British)
 * Fantasmagorie, directed by Émile Cohl (first fully animated film)
 * Fantoche's Nightmare (aka The Puppet's Nightmare), directed by Emile Cohl (French/ Gaumont)
 * The Flower of Youth (French/ Pathe)
 * Fun with the Bridal Party, directed by George Melies
 * The Hanging Lamp (French/ Pathe) starring Max Linder
 * The Haunted Castle (French/ Pathe)
 * The Haunted House, directed by Segundo de Chomón (French), aka The House of Ghosts
 * Incident from Don Quixote, directed by George Melies (French)
 * In the Bogie Man's Cave, directed by George Melies (French)
 * Legend of a Ghost (La légende du fantôme), directed by Segundo de Chomón – (France)
 * The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, produced by Kalem Co., first ever film adaptation of the 1820 short story by Washington Irving
 * Long Distance Wireless Photography, directed by Georges Melies
 * Lord Feathertop, directed by Edwin S. Porter, adapted from the story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
 * Macbeth, directed by J. Stuart Blackton
 * Magic Bricks, directed by Segundo de Chomón
 * The Magic Mirror, directed by Ferdinand Zecca (French/ Pathe)
 * The Man and His Bottle, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon (British)
 * The Monkey Man
 * Moscow Clad In Snow, produced by Pathé
 * The New Lord of the Village, directed by George Melies
 * The Nursemaid's Dream, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon, starring Gertie Potter (British)
 * Oriental Black Art, directed by George Melies (French)
 * Over The Hill To The Poorhouse
 * Pharmaceutical Hallucinations, directed by George Melies
 * The Physician Of The Castle
 * A Poor Knight and the Duke's Daughter (French)
 * Prehistoric Man, produced by Urban-Eclipse Prods.
 * The Princess in the Vase, directed by Wallace McCutcheon, starring D.W. Griffith
 * The Professor's Secret (French/ Gaumont)
 * The Red Barn Crime, or Maria Marten, directed by William Haggar, starring Walter and Violet Haggar (British)
 * The Reprieve: An Episode in the Life of Abraham Lincoln
 * Rescued from an Eagle's Nest, directed by J. Searle Dawley, starring D. W. Griffith
 * La Revolution en Russie, directed by Ferdinand Zecca
 * Romeo and Juliet, directed by J. Stuart Blackton
 * The Runaway Horse (Le Cheval emballé), directed by Louis J. Gasnier – (France)
 * The Saloon Keeper's Nightmare (French/ Gaumont)
 * Satan Finds Mischief (French/ Pathe)
 * She, directed by Edwin S. Porter for Thomas Edison Co., based on the H. Rider Haggard novel; starring Florence Auer and William V. Ranous
 * Sherlock Holmes in the Great Murder Mystery, produced by Crescent Films (made in Denmark); incorporates scenes from Murders in the Rue Morgue by Poe
 * The Snowman, directed by Wallace McCutcheon, starring Edward Dillon and Florence Auer
 * The Spectre (aka The Specter)(French/ Pathe)
 * The Spirit (French/ Gaumont)
 * Spiritualistic Seance (French/ Pathe)
 * Spooks Do The Moving (French/ Pathe)
 * Stenka Razin (Russian) historical drama
 * The Taming of the Shrew, directed by D. W. Griffith
 * The Tempest, directed by Percy Stow
 * The Thieving Hand, directed by J. Stuart Blackton for Vitagraph, starring Paul Panzer
 * Tilly Bébé, die berühmte Löwenbändigerin (Tilly Bébé, the Famous Lion Tamer)
 * Too Much Champagne (U.S./ Vitagraph); features scenes from Dante's Inferno
 * Toula's Dream (French/ Pathe)
 * Trilby (Danish) directed by Viggo Larsen and A.R. Nielsen, starring Oda Alstrup and Viggo Larsen
 * Trouble Of A Grass Widower, starring Max Linder
 * Troubles Of A Manager Of A Burlesque Show
 * The Tyrant Feudal Lord (French/ Gaumont) loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's Masque of the Red Death
 * Un dame vraiment bien (Feuillade)
 * The Wages of Sin: an Italian Tragedy (Vitagraph) an American film
 * Wave of Spooks (French/ Pathe)
 * Wedding Feast and Ghosts (made in Italy)
 * Whaling Afloat And Ashore, directed by Robert W. Paul
 * The Witch of Seville (made in Italy)
 * The Witch's Donkey (French/ Pathe)
 * The Wonderful Charm, directed by George Melies (French)

Deaths

 * May 23 – Peter F. Dailey, actor, singer (born 1868)

Film debuts

 * Hobart Bosworth – The Count of Monte Cristo (short)
 * Sidney Drew – Cupid's Realm or A Game of Hearts (short)
 * Julia Swayne Gordon – Othello (short)
 * D.W. Griffith – actor/writer When Knighthood was in Flower (short); producer Deceived Slumming Party (short); director The Adventures of Dollie (short)
 * Marion Leonard – At the Crossroads of Life (short)
 * Owen Moore – The Guerilla (short)
 * Miriam Nesbitt – Saved by Love
 * Mack Sennett – Old Isaacs, the Pawnbroker (short)
 * Earle Williams – Barbara Fritchie: The Story of a Patriotic Woman (short)
 * Kathlyn Williams – On Thanksgiving Day (short)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: 1908 in film


text:
1907 in film

The year 1907 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * January 19 – Variety publishes its first film review.
 * The Kalem Company founded in New York City by Frank J. Marion, Samuel Long, and George Kleine.
 * May 7 – Seattle film maker William Harbeck sets up a camera at the front of a B.C. Electric streetcar and films the downtown streets of Vancouver, British Columbia. Pieces of the film, the earliest surviving footage of the city, have disappeared, only about 7 minutes remain.
 * May 29 – Salaviinanpolttajat, also known as The Moonshiners, the first fictional film made in Finland, is released.
 * June 20 – L'Enfant prodigue, the first feature-length motion picture produced in Europe, opens in Paris.
 * Peerless Film Manufacturing Company was founded in Chicago by George K. Spoor and Gilbert M. Anderson. On August 10, the studio name was changed to Essanay Studios ("S and A").
 * November 28 - In Haverhill, Massachusetts, scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer opens his first movie theatre (in a few years he had the largest theatre chain in New England and in 1917 he founded his own production company, which eventually became part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).
 * December 7 – First Ben-Hur film, directed by Sidney Olcott and produced by the Kalem Company, released.
 * Carl Laemmle, later of Universal, experiments with combining audio from phonographs with film. Laemmle's experiments lead to the German development of "Syncroscope." Syncroscope had several successful demonstrations, but was eventually abandoned.

B

 * Ben Hur, directed by Sidney Olcott, based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace – (US)
 * The Bewildering Cabinet (Le Placard infernal) (lost), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

C

 * The Clock-Maker's Secret (Le Secret de l'horloger), directed by Gaston Velle – (France)
 * Le Cochon Danseur (The Dancing Pig), directed by Millard Mercury – (France)
 * A Curious Dream, directed by J. Stuart Blackton – (US)

D

 * The Doll's Revenge, directed by Cecil Hepworth – (GB)

E

 * The Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon (L'éclipse du soleil en pleine lune), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * L'Enfant prodigue (The Prodigal Son), directed by Michel Carré, starring Georges Wague – (France)

F

 * First Prize for the Cello (Premier Prix de violoncelle) – (France)

G

 * The Golden Beetle (Le Scarabée d'or), directed by Segundo de Chomón – (France)
 * Good Glue Sticks (La Colle universelle), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

H

 * The Haunted Hotel, directed by J. Stuart Blackton – (US)

L

 * Laughing Gas, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * Løvejagten (The Lion Hunt), directed by Viggo Larsen – (Denmark)

M

 * La Marseillaise, directed by Georges Mendel – (France)

P

 * The Policemen's Little Run (La Course des sergents de ville), directed by Ferdinand Zecca – (France)

R

 * The Race for the Sausage (Course à la saucisse), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * The Red Spectre (Le spectre rouge), directed by Segundo de Chomón and Ferdinand Zecca – (France)
 * Robert Macaire and Bertrand (Robert Macaire et Bertrand, les rois de cambrioleurs), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

S

 * Salaviinanpolttajat (The Moonshiners) (lost), directed by Louis Sparre and Teuvo Puro – (Finland)
 * Satan s'amuse (Satan at Play), directed by Segundo de Chomón – (France)

T

 * That Fatal Sneeze, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon – (GB)
 * Tunneling the English Channel (Le Tunnel sous la Manche ou le Cauchemar franco-anglais), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

U

 * Under the Seas (Deux Cents Milles sous les mers ou le Cauchemar du pêcheur) (incomplete), directed by Georges Méliès, based on the 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas by Jules Verne – (France)

V

 * Vancouver, directed by William Harbeck – (Canada)

W

 * When the Devil Drives, directed by Walter R. Booth – (GB)

Deaths

 * August 30 – Richard Mansfield, stage actor who influenced many later film actors (born 1857)

Debuts

 * Linda Arvidson – Mr. Gay and Mrs. (short)
 * Robert Harron – Dr. Skinium (short)
 * William S. Hart – Ben Hur (short)
 * Florence Turner – How to Cure a Cold (short)

title: 1907 in film


text:
1906 in film

The year 1906 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * December 14 – Pathé Frères pioneer the luxury cinema with the opening of the Omnia Cinéma-Pathé in Paris.
 * December 26 – The world's first feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, is released.
 * Carl Laemmle opens one of the first movie theaters in Chicago.

A

 * Aladdin and His Wonder Lamp (Aladin ou la lampe merveilleuse), directed by Albert Capellani, based on the Middle-Eastern folk tale – (France)
 * The Automobile Thieves, directed by J. Stuart Blackton – (US)

D

 * Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

G

 * The Gans-Nelson Contest, starring Joe Gans and Battling Nelson – (US)

H

 * The Hilarious Posters (Les Affiches en goguette), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * The House of Ghosts (La Maison ensorcelée), directed by Segundo de Chomón – (France)
 * Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, directed by J. Stuart Blackton – (US)

L

 * Life of a Cowboy, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * A Lively Quarter-Day, directed by J. H. Martin – (GB)

M

 * The Magic Roses (Les Roses magique), directed by Segundo de Chomón – (France)
 * Mephisto's Son (Le Fils du Diable), directed by Charles-Lucien Lépine – (France)
 * The Merry Frolics of Satan (Les Quat'Cents Farces du Diable), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * The Mysterious Retort (L'Alchimiste Parafaragaramus ou la Cornue infernale), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

Q

 * The '?' Motorist, directed by Walter R. Booth – (GB)

R

 * The Rajah's Casket (L'есrin du rajah), directed by Gaston Velle – (France)

S

 * San Francisco: Aftermath of Earthquake, directed by Robert K. Bonine – (US)
 * The Scheming Gambler's Paradise (Le Tripot clandestin), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * A Spiritualistic Meeting (Le Fantôme d'Alger) (lost), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * The Story of the Kelly Gang (incomplete), directed by Charles Tait – (Australia)

T

 * Three American Beauties, directed by Edwin S. Porter and Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)
 * A Trip Down Market Street, directed by the Miles Brothers – (US)

V

 * A Visit to Peek Frean and Co.'s Biscuit Works – (GB)

W

 * Whitsuntide Fair at Preston, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * A Winter Straw Ride, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * The Witch (La Fée Carabosse ou le Poignard fatal), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

Deaths

 * May 23 – Henrik Ibsen, author (born 1828)
 * July 18 – Gaynor Rowlands, (lantern actress) (born 1883)

Debuts

 * Florence Lawrence – The Automobile Thieves (short)
 * Gabrielle Robinne – The Troubadour (short)

title: 1906 in film


text:
1905 in film

The year 1905 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * The Manaki brothers make the first motion picture in the Balkans, The Weavers.
 * Pathé Frères colors black-and-white films by machine.
 * Filmmaking takes an unexpected historical role by recording activities along Market Street, in the year preceding the destruction from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (footage in the modern film Trip Down Market Street 1905/2005).
 * Aleksandr Khanzhonkov begins filming his first documentaries.
 * The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach, the oldest surviving Dutch fictional film is released by Alberts Frères. Later to be included in the canon of Dutch cinema as released by the Netherlands Film Festival.
 * June 19 – John P. Harris and his brother Harry in Pittsburgh open the first theater in the U.S. devoted exclusively to the exhibition of motion pictures.
 * December 16 – Variety, an entertainment trade newspaper that would later cover the film industry, is published for the first time in New York City.

#

 * 2 A.M. in the Subway, directed by Billy Bitzer – (US)

A

 * Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom (lost), directed by J. Stuart Blackton, based on the 1890 novel The Sign of the Four by Arthur Conan Doyle – (US)
 * An Adventurous Automobile Trip (Le Raid Paris–Monte Carlo en deux heures), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Airy Fairy Lillian Tries on Her New Corsets, directed by Frank Marion and Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)
 * Automobile Races at Ormond, Fla., produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company – (US)

B

 * Baby's Toilet, directed by Cecil Hepworth – (GB)
 * The Black Imp (Le Diable noir), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Boarding School Girls, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

C

 * Le Cake-walk du Nouveau Cirque (Cake Walk, Performed by Nouveau Cirque), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * La charité du prestidigitateur (The Magician's Alms), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * Chien jouant à la balle (Clown, Dog and Balloon), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * Le coq dressé de Cook et Rilly (Cook & Rilly's Trained Rooster), directed by Alice Guy – (France)

D

 * Dingjun Mountain (lost), directed by Ren Qingtai – (China)

E

 * The Enchanted Sedan Chair (La Chaise à porteurs enchantée), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Esmeralda, directed by Alice Guy and Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, based upon the 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo – (France)
 * Espagne, directed by Alice Guy – (France)

F

 * Five O'Clock Tea, directed by Alice Guy, starring Dranem – (France)

H

 * Halifax Catholic Procession, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Los héroes del sitio de Zaragoza (The Heroes of the Siege of Saragossa), directed by Segundo de Chomón – (Spain)

I

 * In the Swimming Pool, Palm Beach, Florida, directed by G. W. Bitzer – (US)
 * The Infernal Cave (L'antre infernale), directed by Gaston Velle – (France)
 * The Inventor Crazybrains and His Wonderful Airship (Le Dirigeable fantastique ou le Cauchemar d'un inventeur), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

K

 * The Kleptomaniac, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

L

 * Lilas blanc (White Lilacs), directed by Alice Guy, starring Félix Mayol – (France)
 * The Little Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * The Living Playing Cards (Les Cartes vivantes), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

M

 * Les maçons (The Bricklayers), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * La malagueña et le torero (The Malagueña and the Bullfighter), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * The Miller's Daughter, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. and Edwin S. Porter, based on the 1880 stage play Hazel Kirke by Steele MacKaye – (US)
 * The Misadventure of a French Gentleman Without Pants at the Zandvoort Beach (De mésaventure van een Fransch heertje zonder pantalon aan het strand te Zandvoort), directed by Willy Mullens – (Netherlands)
 * The Mysterious Island (L'Île de Calypso), directed by Georges Méliès, based upon the ancient Greek epic poem the Odyssey by Homer – (France)

N

 * The Night Before Christmas, directed by Edwin S. Porter, starring Harry Eytinge, based upon the 1823 poem by Clement Clarke Moore – (US)
 * The Nihilist, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)

O

 * The Other Side of the Hedge, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon – (GB)
 * Our New Errand Boy, directed by James Williamson – (GB)

P

 * The Palace of the Arabian Nights (Le Palais des mille et une nuits), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Polin, l'anatomie du conscrit (Polin, the Anatomy of a Conscript), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * La polka des trottins (The Trottins' Polka), directed by Alice Guy, starring Félix Mayol – (France)
 * La Presa di Roma (The Capture of Rome), directed by Filoteo Alberini – (Italy)

R

 * Rescued by Rover, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil Hepworth – (GB)
 * Revolution in Russia (La révolution en Russie), directed by Lucien Nonguet – (France)
 * Rip's Dream (La Légende de Rip Van Vinckle), directed by Georges Méliès, based upon the 1819 short story Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving – (France)

S

 * The Seven Ages, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * Special March Past of St. Joseph's Scholars and Special Parade of St. Matthew's Pupils, Blackburn, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * La statue (The Statue), directed by Alice Guy – (France)

T

 * Le tango (The Tango), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * A Trip to Salt Lake City, directed by G. W. Bitzer – (US)

U

 * The Unfortunate Policeman, produced by Robert W. Paul – (GB)

V

 * Le vrai jiu-jitsu (The True Jiu-jitsu), directed by Alice Guy – (France)

W

 * The Weavers, directed by the Manaki Brothers – (Balkans)
 * The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

Deaths

 * March 24 – Jules Verne, famous novelist of fantasy stories and science-fiction, (born 1828)
 * March 25 – Maurice Barrymore, Barrymore family patriarch (born 1849)
 * April 23 – Joseph Jefferson, Rip Van Winkle (1896 film) (born 1829)
 * October 13 – Henry Irving, English Shakespearean actor and stage manager, who at one time was Bram Stoker's employer, (born 1838)

Debuts

 * Arthur Johnson – The White Caps (short)
 * Max Linder – First Night Out (short)
 * Paul Panzer – Stolen by Gypsies (short)

title: 1905 in film


text:
1904 in film

The year 1904 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * As shown in the film series Westinghouse Works, some filmmakers begin to move away from eye-level filmmaking and use the camera to explore spaces from an angle usually inaccessible to the average person.
 * William Fox purchases his first Nickelodeon.
 * 23 June: Marcus Loew founds the theatre chain, the People's Vaudeville Company, which later was renamed Loews Theatres which was the oldest theatre chain operating in North America when it was merged with AMC Theatres in 2006

A

 * Audley Range School, Blackburn, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Automobile Race for the Vanderbilt Cup, directed by Billy Bitzer and A.E. Weed – (US)

B

 * The Bewitched Traveller, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon and Cecil Hepworth – (GB)
 * Blackpool Victoria Pier, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * The Bold Bank Robbery, directed by Jack Frawley – (US)
 * Buy Your Own Cherries, directed by Robert W. Paul – (GB)

C

 * The Cook in Trouble (Sorcellerie culinaire), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

D

 * A Day in the Hayfields, directed by Cecil Hepworth – (GB)

E

 * An Englishman Trip to Paris from London, directed by Lewin Fitzhamon – (GB)
 * The European Rest Cure, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

F

 * Faust and Marguerite (Damnation du docteur Faust), directed by Georges Méliès, based on the 1859 opera by Charles Gounod – (France)
 * A Fire in a Burlesque Theatre, directed by A.E. Weed – (US)

G

 * Girls Taking Time Checks, directed by Billy Bitzer – (US)

I

 * The Impossible Voyage (Le Voyage à travers l'impossible), directed by Georges Méliès, based on the 1882 stage play Journey Through the Impossible by Jules Verne – (France)

L

 * The Lost Child, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)

M

 * A Miracle Under the Inquisition (Un miracle sous l'inquisition), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * The Mistletoe Bough, directed by Percy Stow – (GB)
 * The Moonshiner, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)

O

 * Opening of Drill Hall, Accrington by General Baden-Powell, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

P

 * Princess Rajah Dance, directed by A.E. Weed – (US)

R

 * A Railway Tragedy, produced by the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation – (GB)

S

 * The Strike (La Grève), directed by Ferdinand Zecca – (France)
 * The Suburbanite, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)

T

 * Tchin-Chao, the Chinese Conjurer (Le Thaumaturge chinois), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Troubles of a Manager of a Burlesque Show, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)

W

 * Westinghouse Works, 1904, a collection of 21 short films directed by Billy Bitzer – (US)
 * The Widow and the Only Man, directed by Wallace McCutcheon Sr. – (US)
 * The Wonderful Living Fan (Le Merveilleux Éventail vivant), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

Deaths

 * May 8 – Eadweard Muybridge, cinematographer (born 1830)
 * July 15 – Anton Chekhov, writer (born 1860)
 * September 22 – Wilson Barrett, actor, writer (born 1846)

title: 1904 in film


text:
1903 in film

The year 1903 in film involved many significant events in cinema.

Events

 * Thomas Edison demolishes "America's First Movie Studio", the Black Maria.
 * The United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decides that federal copyright protection for "photographs" extends to motion pictures, and that filmmakers could copyright films as a whole rather than having to separately register each frame.
 * The three elder Warner Bros. begin in the exhibition business and open their first theater, the Cascade.
 * Gaston Méliès, Georges' brother, opens a branch of Star Film in New York to defend its production's copyrights.
 * Adolph Zukor and Marcus Loew partner with Mitchell Mark to expand his chain of movie theaters.
 * William N. Selig's war film A Soldier's Dream is released. The film shows soldiers playing cards and music around a campfire. Scholars have speculated that the double-exposed image used to create one soldier's dream sequence may have been inspired by Méliès.

A

 * Alice in Wonderland, directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, based on the 1865 novel by Lewis Carroll – (GB)
 * The Apparition (Le Revenant), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

C

 * Capital Execution (Henrettelsen), directed by Peter Elfelt – (Denmark)
 * A Chess Dispute, directed by Robert W. Paul – (GB)

D

 * The Damnation of Faust, directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * A Daring Daylight Burglary, by Frank Mottershaw – (GB)
 * Desperate Poaching Affray, directed by William Haggar – (GB)
 * Diving Lucy, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

E

 * Electrocuting an Elephant, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * The Enchanted Well (Le Puits fantastique), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * An Extraordinary Cab Accident, directed by Robert W. Paul – (GB)

F

 * Faust and Mephistopheles, directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * From Show Girl to Burlesque Queen, directed by A. E. Weed – (US)

G

 * The Gay Shoe Clerk, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * The Georgetown Loop (Colorado), directed by Billy Bitzer – (US)
 * The Great Train Robbery, directed by Edwin S. Porter, starring Broncho Billy Anderson – (US)

H

 * Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway (lost), directed by Joe Rosenthal – (Canada)

I

 * The Infernal Cake Walk (Le Cake-Walk infernal), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * The Infernal Cauldron (Le Chaudron infernal), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * The Inn Where No Man Rests (L'Auberge du bon repos), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

K

 * The Kingdom of the Fairies (Le Royaume des fées), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

L

 * Life and Passion of the Christ (Vie et Passion du Christ), directed by Lucien Nonguet and Ferdinand Zecca – (France)
 * Life of an American Fireman, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

M

 * The Magic Lantern (La Lanterne magique), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Mary Jane's Mishap, directed by George Albert Smith – (GB)
 * The Melomaniac (Le Mélomane), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * A Message from Mars (lost), by Franklyn Barrett – (NZ)
 * Misfortune Never Comes Alone (Un malheur n'arrive jamais seul), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Momijigari (Viewing Scarlet Maple Leaves), directed by Tsunekichi Shibata, based on the 15th century kabuki play by Kanze Nobumitsu – (Japan)
 * The Monster (Le Monstre), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * The Mysterious Box (La Boîte à malice), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

O

 * Old London Street Scenes, directed by George Albert Smith – (GB)
 * The Oracle of Delphi (L'Oracle de Delphes), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

P

 * Panorama of Beach and Cliff House, produced by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company – (US)
 * Petticoat Lane – (GB)

R

 * Rip Van Winkle, directed by William K. L. Dickson, based on the 1819 short story by Washington Irving – (US)
 * Runaway Match, directed by Alf Collins – (GB)

S

 * The Sick Kitten, directed by George Albert Smith – (GB)
 * Skyscrapers of New York City, from the North River, directed by J.B. Smith – (US)
 * A Spiritualistic Photographer (La Portrait Spirite), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

T

 * The Terrible Turkish Executioner (Le Bourreau turc), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

U

 * Uncle Tom's Cabin, directed by Edwin S. Porter, based on the 1852 novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe – (US)

W

 * What Happened in the Tunnel, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * The Witch's Revenge (Le Sorcier), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

Deaths

 * c. February 15 – Julie Verstraete-Lacquet, Flemish actress, dies at 69

Debut
G. M. Anderson

title: 1903 in film


text:
1902 in film

The year 1902 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * March 10 – A Circuit Court decision in the United States ends Thomas Edison's monopoly on the 35 mm movie film technology.
 * April 2 – Thomas Lincoln Tally opens the Electric Theater, the first permanent movie theater, in Los Angeles. Tally co-founds the First National Exhibitors Circuit in 1917.
 * August 9 – Georges Méliès' film The Coronation of Edward VII (a staged simulation with inserted actuality footage) is first shown in London on the evening of the Coronation itself.
 * September 1 – actor/producer Méliès premières the first science fiction film, the silent A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans La Lune), at the Théâtre Robert-Houdin in Paris, France; it proves an immediate success. One scene features the animated human face of the Moon being struck in the eye by a rocket.
 * William Wardell invents an 11 mm amateur film format, Vitak.

Mitchell and Kenyon

 * Bradford Coronation Procession
 * Burnley v. Manchester United
 * Comic Pictures in High Street, West Bromwich
 * Dewsbury v. Manningham
 * Electric Tram Rides from Forster Square, Bradford
 * Employees Leaving Storey's Moor Lane Mill, Lancaster
 * The Great Local Derby: Accrington v. Church, Cricket Match
 * Leeds Athletic and Cycling Club Carnival
 * Lieutenant Clive Wilson and the Tranby Croft Party, Hull
 * Living Wigan
 * Sheffield United v. Bury
 * Street Scenes in Halifax
 * Tram Ride into Halifax
 * Wexford Bull Ring
 * Workers Leaving the Jute Works, Barrow

Edwin S. Porter

 * Fun in a Bakery Shop
 * Jack and the Beanstalk, based on the 1807 fairy tale by Benjamin Tabart

Ferdinand Zecca

 * Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs), based on the Middle-Eastern folk tale
 * Quo Vadis?, co-directed by Lucien Nonguet

Georges Méliès

 * The Coronation of Edward VII (Le Sacre d'Édouard VII)
 * Gulliver's Travels Among the Lilliputians and the Giants (Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les Géants), based on the 1726 novel by Jonathan Swift
 * The Treasures of Satan (Les Trésors de Satan)
 * A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune), based on the 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne
 * Robinson Crusoe (Les aventures de Robinson Crusoë), based on the 1719 novel by Daniel Defoe

Others

 * The Little Match Seller, directed by James Williamson, based on the 1845 fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen – (GB)
 * Ringling Brothers Parade Film, produced by William Selig – (US)
 * Snow White, produced by Siegmund Lubin, based on the 1812 fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm – (US)
 * Working Rotary Snow Plows, produced by Edison Studios – (US)

Deaths

 * February 15 – Wilhelmina J. R. Albregt-Engelman, Dutch actress (born 1834)

title: 1902 in film


text:
1901 in film

The year 1901 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * Edwin S. Porter is put in charge of Thomas Edison's motion-picture production company
 * Thomas Edison closes "America's First Movie Studio", the Edison's Black Maria

A

 * Alfred Butterworth and Sons, Glebe Mills, Hollinwood, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Another Job for the Undertaker, directed by Edwin S. Porter and George S. Fleming – (US)

B

 * The Big Swallow, directed by James Williamson – (GB)
 * Blue Beard (Barbe-Bleue), directed by Georges Méliès, based on the 1697 fairy tale by Charles Perrault – (France)

C

 * The Countryman and the Cinematograph, directed by Robert W. Paul – (GB)
 * Cunard Vessel at Liverpool, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

D

 * The Devil and the Statue (Le Diable géant ou le Miracle de la Madone), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Dream and Reality (Rêve et réalité), directed by Ferdinand Zecca – (France)

E

 * Employees Leaving Alexandra Docks, Liverpool, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Excelsior!, directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

F

 * Fire!, directed by James Williamson – (GB)

G

 * The Gans-McGovern Fight, a documentary starring Joe Gans and Terry McGovern – (US)
 * The Gordon Sisters Boxing, directed by Thomas Edison – (US)

H

 * The Haunted Curiosity Shop, directed by Walter R. Booth – (GB)
 * History of a Crime (Histoire d'un crime), directed by Ferdinand Zecca – (France)

I

 * Inauguration of the Australian Commonwealth, documentary directed by Joseph Perry – (Australia)

J

 * Jamaica Street, Glasgow, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

K

 * Kansas Saloon Smashers, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

L

 * Lord Roberts' Visit to Manchester, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

M

 * The Magic Sword, directed by Walter R. Booth – (GB)
 * The Man with the Rubber Head (L'Homme à la tête en caoutchouc), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Manchester Band of Hope Procession, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Manchester Street Scene, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Morecambe Church Lads' Brigade at Drill, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

N

 * North Sea Fisheries, North Shields, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

P

 * Panoramic View of the Morecambe Sea Front, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Parkgate Iron and Steel Co., Rotherham, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Peeping Tom (Par le trou de la serrure), directed by Ferdinand Zecca – (France)
 * Pendlebury Colliery, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Pendlebury Spinning Co., produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * President McKinley Inauguration Footage, directed by Thomas Edison – (US)
 * Preston Egg Rolling, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

R

 * Race for the Muriatti Cup, Manchester, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Red Riding Hood (Le Petit Chaperon rouge) (lost), directed by Georges Méliès, based on the 17th century fairy tale by Charles Perrault – (France)
 * Ride on the Tramcar Through Belfast, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Royal Proclamation of the Death of Queen Victoria, Blackburn, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

S

 * Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost, directed by Walter R. Booth, based on the 1843 novella A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – (GB)
 * Sedgwick's Bioscope Show Front, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * The Seven Castles of the Devil (Le Sept Châteaux du Diable), directed by Ferdinand Zecca – (France)
 * A Sneaky Boer, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Star Theatre, directed by Frederick S. Armitage – (US)
 * Stop Thief!, directed by James Williamson – (GB)

T

 * Torpedo Flotilla Visit to Manchester, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Trapeze Disrobing Act, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

U

 * Undressing Extraordinary, directed by Walter R. Booth – (GB)
 * University Procession on Degree Day, Birmingham, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

W

 * What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City, directed by George S. Fleming and Edwin S. Porter – (US)

Deaths

 * May 9 - Charles Chaplin, Sr. (born 1863), actor and father of Charlie Chaplin.
 * June 2 – James A. Herne (born 1839), actor playwright. Some of his works such as Shore Acres adapted into silent films. also father of screenwriter Julie Herne and actress Chrystal Herne.

Debut

 * Anna Held

title: 1901 in film


text:
1900 in film

The year 1900 in film involved some significant events.

Events

 * Reulos, Goudeau & Co. invent Mirographe, a 21 mm amateur format.
 * The Lumière Brothers premiere their new Lumiere Wide format for the 1900 World Fair. At 75 mm wide, it has held the record for over 100 years as the widest format yet developed.
 * Raoul Grimoin-Sanson also creates a sensation at the 1900 World Fair with his multi-projector Cinéorama spectacle, which uses ten 70 mm projectors to create a simulated 360-degree balloon ride over Paris. The exhibit is closed before it formally opens, however, due to legitimate health and safety concerns regarding the heat of the combined projectors, and releases the format as La Petite.
 * Gaumont-Demeny release their own 15 mm amateur format, Pocket Chrono.
 * Release of the first film version of Hamlet, an adaptation of the duel scene, with French actress Sarah Bernhardt playing the title role and accompanying recorded sound.
 * Making of the first film to feature the detective character Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Baffled, by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company.
 * Jeanne d'Arc becomes the first film of considerable length (10 minutes) to be shown entirely in colour.
 * William N. Selig makes The Chicago Stockyards—From Hoof to Market for Chicago-based Philip Danforth Armour, a prominent businessman in the meatpacking industry, showing the full meatpacking process from cattle being unloaded at the stockyards to canning. Studio lights do not exist, so stage spotlights are borrowed from the Richard Mansfield Theatrical Company to film inside the slaughterhouse.

#

 * 20,000 Employees Entering Lord Armstrong's Elswick Works, Newcastle upon Tyne, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)

A

 * Army Life; or, How Soldiers Are Made: Mounted Infantry (lost), a documentary directed by Robert W. Paul – (GB)
 * As Seen Through a Telescope, directed by George Albert Smith – (GB)
 * Attack on a China Mission, directed by James Williamson – (GB)
 * Automobile Parade, directed by William C. Paley – (US)

B

 * Battle of Mafeking, directed by James H. White – (US)
 * The Beggar's Deceit, directed by Cecil Hepworth – (GB)

C

 * Chinese Magic (aka Yellow Peril), directed by Walter R. Booth – (GB)
 * The Clown and the Alchemist, directed by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith – (US)

D

 * Danse Serpentine (In a Lion's Cage), directed by Alice Guy – (France)
 * Davy Jones' Locker, directed by Frederick S. Armitage – (US)

E

 * The Enchanted Drawing, directed by J. Stuart Blackton – (US)
 * Explosion of a Motor Car, directed by Cecil Hepworth – (GB)

F

 * A Fantastical Meal (Le Repas fantastique), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Faust and Marguerite, directed by Edwin S. Porter, based on the 1859 opera by Charles Gounod – (US)

G

 * Going to Bed Under Difficulties (Le Déshabillage impossible), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * Grandma's Reading Glass, directed by George Albert Smith – (GB)

H

 * How He Missed His Train (Le Réveil d'un monsieur pressé), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)
 * How It Feels to Be Run Over, directed by Cecil Hepworth – (GB)

J

 * A Jersey Skeeter, directed by Arthur Marvin – (US)
 * Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

K

 * The Kiss, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

L

 * Ladies' Skirt Nailed to a Fence, produced by Bamforth & Co Ltd – (GB)
 * Let Me Dream Again, directed by George Albert Smith – (GB)

M

 * Messrs Lumb And Co., Leaving The Works, Huddersfield, produced by Mitchell and Kenyon – (GB)
 * Eine moderne Jungfrau von Orléans, directed by Max Skladanowsky – (Germany)
 * The Mystic Swing, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)

O

 * The One-Man Band, directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

R

 * Reproduction of the McGovern and Dixon Fight, starring Terry McGovern and George Dixon – (US)
 * Rough Sea, produced by Bamforth & Co Ltd. – (GB)

S

 * Sherlock Holmes Baffled, directed by Arthur Marvin – (US)
 * Soldiers of the Cross (lost), directed by Joseph Perry – (Australia)
 * Solser en Hesse (lost), directed by M.H. Laddé – (Netherlands)

T

 * The Two Blind Men (Les Deux Aveugles) (lost), directed by Georges Méliès – (France)

U

 * Uncle Josh in a Spooky Hotel, directed by Edwin S. Porter – (US)
 * Uncle Josh's Nightmare, directed by Edwin  S. Porter – (US)

V

 * Le village de Namo – Panorama pris d'une chaise à porteurs, directed by Gabriel Veyre – (France)

Date unknown
Juanita Angeles, Filipina pre-war and silent film actress

Deaths

 * November 22 – Arthur Sullivan, producer of musicals, half of the team of Gilbert and Sullivan (born 1842)
 * November 30 – Oscar Wilde, playwright whose works were made into films (born 1854)
 * December 31 – Hannibal Goodwin, retired minister, in 1886 invented nitrate film roll. (born 1822)

Debut

 * Sarah Bernhardt
 * Benoit Constant Coquelin

title: 1900 in film


text:
Ornament and Crime

"Ornament and Crime" is an essay and lecture by modernist architect Adolf Loos that criticizes ornament in useful objects.

History
Contrary to popular belief that it was composed in 1908, Adolf Loos first gave the lecture in 1910 at the Akademischer Verband für Literatur und Musik in Vienna. The essay was then published in 1913 in Les Cahiers d’aujourd’hui in French as Ornement et Crime. Only in 1929 was the essay published in German in the Frankfurter Zeitung, as Ornament und Verbrechen. It was the architect Henry Kulka, who assisted Loos during a reprint of the essay in 1931 in Trotzdem, that altered the original year to 1908 after he consulted Loos, who either didn't remember well or wanted to assume primacy in the confrontation against the Secessionists.

Content
The essay was written when Art Nouveau—known as Secession in Austria and which Loos had excoriated even at its height in 1900—was showing a new way forward for modern art. The essay was important in articulating some moralizing views, inherited from the Arts and Crafts movement, which would be fundamental to the Bauhaus design studio, and would help define the ideology of modernism in architecture.

"The evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects," Loos proclaimed, thus linking the optimistic sense of the linear and upward progress of cultures with the contemporary vogue for applying evolution to cultural contexts. Loos's work was prompted by regulations he encountered when he designed a building without ornamentation opposite a palace. He eventually conceded to requirements by adding window flower boxes.

title: Ornament and Crime


text:
Jack Valenti

Jack Joseph Valenti (September 5, 1921 – April 26, 2007) was an American political advisor and lobbyist who served as a Special Assistant to U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was also the longtime president of the Motion Picture Association of America. During his 38-year tenure in the MPAA, he created the MPAA film rating system, and was generally regarded as one of the most influential pro-copyright lobbyists in the world.

Early life and education
Valenti was born on September 5, 1921, in Houston, the son of Italian immigrants. He attended Sam Houston High School. During World War II, he was a first lieutenant in the United States Army Air Force. Valenti flew 51 combat missions as the pilot-commander of a B-25 medium bomber and received four decorations, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal.

Valenti graduated from the University of Houston in 1946 with a BA. During his time there, he worked on the staff of the university newspaper, The Daily Cougar, and was president of the university's student government. Valenti would later serve on the university's board of regents.

Career
After earning an M.B.A. from Harvard University in 1948, Valenti worked for Humble Oil in its advertising department, where he helped the company's Texas gas stations jump from fifth to first in sales through a "cleanest restrooms" campaign.

In 1952, he and a partner named Weldon Weekley founded Weekley & Valenti, an advertising agency, with oil company Conoco as its first client. In 1956, Valenti met then Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson. Weekley & Valenti branched out into political consulting and added Representative Albert Thomas, a Johnson ally, as a client. In 1960, Valenti's firm assisted in the Kennedy-Johnson presidential campaign.

Politics

Valenti served as liaison with the news media during President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson's November 22, 1963, visit to Dallas, Texas, and Valenti was in the presidential motorcade. Following the assassination of President Kennedy, Valenti was present at Lyndon Johnson's swearing-in aboard Air Force One, and flew with him to Washington. He then became the first "special assistant" to Johnson's White House and lived there for the first two months of Johnson's presidency. In 1964, Johnson gave Valenti the responsibility to handle relations with the Republican Congressional leadership, particularly Gerald Ford and Charles Halleck from the House of Representatives, and the Senate's Everett Dirksen.

Valenti later called Johnson "the most single dominating human being that I've ever been in contact with" and "the single most intelligent man I've ever known". In a speech before the American Advertising Federation in 1965, Valenti said: "I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president."

Valenti later attacked film director Oliver Stone for the 1991 movie JFK. He called the movie a "monstrous charade" and said, "I owe where I am today to Lyndon Johnson. I could not live with myself if I stood by mutely and let some filmmaker soil his memory."

MPAA
In 1966, Valenti, at the insistence of Universal Studios chief Lew Wasserman and with Johnson's consent, resigned his White House commission and became president of the Motion Picture Association of America. With Valenti's arrival in Hollywood, the pair were lifelong allies, and together orchestrated and controlled how Hollywood would conduct business for the next several decades.

William Patry, a copyright attorney for the Clinton administration, who observed Valenti firsthand says:

"His personal passion and extreme comfort around politicians gave him credibility that others ... would lack. Mr Valenti was a consummate salesman, who like all great salesmen ... worked himself up into believing the truth of his clients' message. Those privileged to see Mr Valenti offstage – talking openly with his clients about what could or could not be achieved, and what artifice would or would not work – are aware that Mr Valenti's clients frequently disagreed with his advice and directed him to deliver a different message through a different artifice. [He] was a great actor working on the stage of Washington DC (and sometimes globally) on behalf of an industry that appreciated his craft, but that never let him forget that the message was theirs and not his."

Movie rating system
In 1968, Valenti developed the MPAA film rating system, which initially comprised four distinct ratings: G, M, R and X. The M rating was soon replaced by GP, and changed to PG in 1972. The X rating immediately proved troublesome, since it was not trademarked and therefore used freely by the pornographic film industry, with which it became most associated. Mainstream films such as Midnight Cowboy and A Clockwork Orange were assumed by the public to be pornographic because they carried the X rating. In 1990, the trademarked "adults only" NC-17 rating was introduced as a replacement for the non-trademarked X-rating. The PG-13 rating had been added in 1984 to provide a greater range of distinction for audiences and was first proposed by Steven Spielberg.

Valenti on new technologies
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Valenti became notorious for his flamboyant attacks on the Sony Betamax Video Cassette Recorder (VCR), which the MPAA feared would devastate the movie industry. He famously told a congressional panel in 1982, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone." Despite Valenti's prediction, the home video market ultimately came to be the mainstay of movie studio revenues throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act
In 1998, Valenti lobbied for the controversial Digital Millennium Copyright Act, arguing that copyright infringement via the Internet would severely damage the record and movie industries.

2003 screener ban injunction
In 2003, Valenti found himself at the center of the so-called screener debate, as the MPAA barred studios and many independent producers from sending screener copies of their films to critics and voters in various awards shows. Under mounting industry pressure and a court injunction ''Antidote Int'l Films Inc. et al. v MPAA'' (November 2003), Valenti backed down in 2004, narrowly avoiding a massive and embarrassing antitrust lawsuit against the MPAA.

The Coalition of Independent Filmmakers' Jeff Levy-Hinte, IFP/Los Angeles executive director Dawn Hudson and IFP/New York executive director Michelle Byrd said in a joint statement, "By obtaining a court order to force the MPAA to lift the screener ban last December, the Coalition enabled individual distributors to determine when and in what manner to distribute promotional screeners." It was viewed as Valenti's greatest professional loss.

Honors
Valenti received the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal for his service with the Army Air Force during the Second World War. In 1969, Jack Valenti received the Bronze Medallion, New York City's highest civilian honor. In 1985, Jack Valenti received the French Légion d'Honneur.

In 2002, the University of Houston bestowed Valenti an honorary doctorate.

In December 2003, Valenti received the "Legend in Leadership Award" from the Chief Executive Leadership Institute of the Yale School of Management.

In June 2005, the Washington DC headquarters of the Motion Picture Association of America, was renamed the Jack Valenti Building. It is located at 888 16th St. NW, Washington DC, very close to the White House. Jack Valenti maintained an office on the 8th floor, outside the MPAA's space, until his death.

In April 2008, the University of Houston renamed its School of Communication to the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication in his honor. Valenti was one of the school's notable alumni.

Retirement
Valenti's salary in 2004 was reported to be $1.35 million, which made him the seventh-highest paid Washington trade group chief, according to the National Journal.

Valenti was nominated for President of the United States by the Alfalfa Club in 2004.

In August 2004, Valenti, then 82, retired and was replaced by former U.S. Congressman and Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. The previous head of the ratings system, Joan Graves, was appointed by Valenti.

After retirement from the MPAA, he became involved in technology-related venture capital activities, such as joining the Advisory Board of Legend Ventures where he advised on media investment opportunities. He also remained a supporter of causes linked to his Italian American heritage and was a member of the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) for more than 20 years.

After retiring from the MPAA in 2004, Valenti became the first President of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, an organization founded by philanthropists Edward W. Scott and Adam Waldman. The founders wanted to support the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria in its work to prevent millions of people from dying of preventable and treatable diseases each year. Under Valenti's leadership, Friends of the Global Fight oversaw a steady increase in U.S. funding for the Global Fund, resulting in a large-scale, positive impact in the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. Valenti remained President of Friends of the Global Fight until his death in 2007.

Personal life
In 1962, at age 41, Valenti married Mary Margaret Wiley who served on the staff of President Lyndon Johnson. They had three children: John, Alexandra, and Courtenay Valenti, who became a Warner Bros. studio executive. He died just before their forty-fifth wedding anniversary.

Nancy Clark Reynolds had been a love interest of Valenti.

In 1964, the Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted an investigation concerning whether Valenti had a sexual relationship with a male photographer, at a time when homosexual acts were still illegal in many parts of the United States. The investigation concluded that there was no evidence of Valenti being homosexual.

In 1995, Valenti voiced himself in the two-part Freakazoid! episode "The Chip", where he helped recount the origin of the titular hero; he also lectured about movie ratings using stickers of a family, and made frequent references to his cheeks.

In the 2016 film Jackie, about the life of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis after Kennedy's assassination, Valenti is portrayed by Max Casella.

Death
Valenti died from complications of a stroke at his home in Washington on April 26, 2007, at the age of 85. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery under a veteran's gravestone, which lists both his war decorations and his years as president of the MPAA. His memoirs This Time, This Place: My life in war, the White House and Hollywood were published on May 15, 2007, a few weeks after his death.

Following his death, the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) launched the NIAF Jack Valenti Institute, which provides support to Italian-American film students, in his memory. Director Martin Scorsese launched the institute at the Foundation's 32nd Anniversary Gala, after receiving an award from Mary Margaret Valenti.

Books

 * Ten Heroes and Two Heroines (1957)
 * The Bitter Taste of Glory (1971)
 * A Very Human President (1976; ISBN 0-671-80834-6)
 * Protect and Defend (1992; ISBN 0-385-41735-7)
 * Speak Up With Confidence (2002; ISBN 0-7868-8750-8)
 * This Time This Place (2007; ISBN 0-307-34664-1)

title: Jack Valenti


text:
Aperture grille

An aperture grille is one of two major technologies used to manufacture color cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer displays; the other is the shadow mask. The first patented aperture grille televisions were manufactured under the Trinitron brand name.

Fine vertical wires behind the front glass of the display screen separate the different colors of phosphors into strips. These wires are positioned such that an electron beam from one of three guns at the rear of the tube is only able to strike phosphors of the appropriate color. That is, the blue electron gun will strike blue phosphors, but will find a wire blocks the path to red and green phosphors.

The fine wires allow for a finer dot pitch as they can be spaced much closer together than the perforations of a shadow mask, and there need be no gap between adjacent horizontal pixels.

During the display of bright images, a shadow mask warms, and expands outward in all directions (sometimes called blooming). Aperture grilles do not exhibit this behavior; when the wires heat up, they expand vertically. Because there are no defined holes, this expansion does not affect the image, and the wires do not move horizontally.

The vertical wires of the aperture grille have a resonant frequency and will vibrate in sympathetic resonance with loud sounds near the display, resulting in fluttering and shimmering of colors on the display. To reduce these resonant effects, one or two horizontal stabilizing wires, called "damping wires", are welded across the grille wires, and may be visible as fine dark lines across the face of the screen. These stabilizing wires provide the easiest way to distinguish aperture grille and shadow mask displays at a glance. The stabilized grille can still vibrate but the sounds need to be loud and be emitted close to the display.

Additionally, aperture grille displays tend to be vertically flat and are often horizontally flat as well, while shadow mask displays usually have a spherical curvature.

The first patented aperture grille televisions were manufactured by Sony in the late 1960s under the Trinitron brand name, which the company carried over to its line of CRT computer monitors. Subsequent designs, whether licensed from Sony or manufactured after the patent's expiration, tend to use the -tron suffix, such as Mitsubishi's Diamondtron and ViewSonic's SonicTron.

Aperture grilles are not as mechanically stable as shadow or slot masks; a tap can cause the image to briefly become distorted, even with damping/support wires.

title: Aperture grille


text:
Shadow mask

The shadow mask is one of the two technologies used in the manufacture of cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions and computer monitors which produce clear, focused color images. The other approach is the aperture grille, better known by its trade name, Trinitron. All early color televisions and the majority of CRT computer monitors used shadow mask technology. Both of these technologies are largely obsolete, having been increasingly replaced since the 1990s by the liquid-crystal display (LCD).

A shadow mask is a metal plate punched with tiny holes that separate the colored phosphors in the layer behind the front glass of the screen. Shadow masks are made by photochemical machining, a technique that allows for the drilling of small holes on metal sheets. Three electron guns at the back of the screen sweep across the mask, with the beams only reaching the screen if they pass through the holes. As the guns are physically separated at the back of the tube, their beams approach the mask from three slightly different angles, so after passing through the holes they hit slightly different locations on the screen.

The screen is patterned with dots of colored phosphor positioned so that each can only be hit by one of the beams coming from the three electron guns. For instance, the blue phosphor dots are hit by the beam from the "blue gun" after passing through a particular hole in the mask. The other two guns do the same for the red and green dots. This arrangement allows the three guns to address the individual dot colors on the screen, even though their beams are much too large and too poorly aimed to do so without the mask in place.

A red, a green, and a blue phosphor are generally arranged in a triangular shape (sometimes called a "triad"). For television use, modern displays (starting in the late 1960s) use rectangular slots instead of circular holes, improving brightness. This variation is sometimes referred to as a slot mask.

Color television
Color television had been studied even before commercial broadcasting became common, but it was not until the late 1940s that the problem was seriously considered. At the time, a number of systems were being proposed that used separate red, green and blue signals (RGB), broadcast in succession. Most experimental systems broadcast entire frames in sequence, with a colored filter (or "gel") that rotated in front of an otherwise conventional black and white television tube. Each frame encoded one color of the picture, and the wheel spun in sync with the signal so the correct gel was in front of the screen when that colored frame was being displayed. Because they broadcast separate signals for the different colors, all of these systems were incompatible with existing black and white sets. Another problem was that the mechanical filter made them flicker unless very high refresh rates were used. (This is conceptually similar to a DLP based projection display where a single DLP device is used for all three color channels.)

RCA worked along different lines entirely, using the luminance-chrominance system first introduced by Georges Valensi in 1938. This system did not directly encode or transmit the RGB signals; instead it combined these colors into one overall brightness figure, called the "luminance". This closely matched the black and white signal of existing broadcasts, allowing the picture to be displayed on black and white televisions. The remaining color information was separately encoded into the signal as a high-frequency modulation to produce a composite video signal. On a black and white television this extra information would be seen as a slight randomization of the image intensity, but the limited resolution of existing sets made this invisible in practice. On color sets the extra information would be detected, filtered out and added to the luminance to re-create the original RGB for display.

Although RCA's system had enormous benefits, it had not been successfully developed because it was difficult to produce the display tubes. Black and white TVs used a continuous signal and the tube could be coated with an even painting of phosphor. With RCA's system, the color was changing continually along the line, which was far too fast for any sort of mechanical filter to follow. Instead, the phosphor had to be broken down into a discrete pattern of colored spots. Focusing the right signal on each of these tiny spots was beyond the capability of electron guns of the era.

Numerous attempts
Through the 1940s and early 1950s a wide variety of efforts were made to address the color problem. A number of major companies continued to work with separate color "channels" with various ways to re-combine the image. RCA was included in this group; on 5 February 1940 they demonstrated a system using three conventional tubes combined to form a single image on a plate of glass, but the image was too dim to be useful.

John Logie Baird, who made the first public color television broadcast using a semi-mechanical system on 4 February 1938, was already making progress on an all-electronic version. His design, the Telechrome, used two electron guns aimed at either side of a phosphor covered plate in the center of the tube. Development had not progressed far when Baird died in 1946. A similar project was the Geer tube, which used a similar arrangement of guns aimed at the back of a single plate covered with small three-sided phosphor covered pyramids.

However, all of these projects had problems with colors bleeding from one phosphor to another. In spite of their best efforts, the wide electron beams simply could not focus tightly enough to hit the individual dots, at least over the entirety of the screen. Moreover, most of these devices were unwieldy; the arrangement of the electron guns around the outside of the screen resulted in a very large display with considerable "dead space".

Rear-gun efforts
A more practical system would use a single gun at the back of the tube, firing at a single multi-color screen on the front. Through the early 1950s, several major electronics companies started development of such systems.

One contender was General Electric's Penetron, which used three layers of phosphor painted on top of each other on the back of the screen. Color was selected by changing the energy of the electrons in the beam so that they penetrated to different depths within the phosphor layers. Actually hitting the correct layer proved almost impossible, and GE eventually gave up on the technology for television use, although it went on to see some use in the avionics world where the color gamut could be reduced, often to three colors, which the system was able to achieve.

More common were attempts to use a secondary focussing arrangement just behind the screen to produce the required accuracy. Paramount Pictures worked long and hard on the Chromatron, which used a set of wires behind the screen as a secondary "gun", further focusing the beam and steering it towards the correct color. Philco's "Apple" tube used additional stripes of phosphor that released a burst of electrons when the electron beam swept across them, by timing the bursts it could adjust the passage of the beam and hit the correct colors.

It would be years before any of these systems made their way into production. GE had given up on the Penetron by the early 1960s. Sony tried the Chromatron in the 1960s, but gave up and developed the Trinitron instead. The Apple tube re-emerged in the 1970s and had some success with a variety of vendors. But it was RCA's success with the shadow mask that dampened most of these efforts. Until 1968, every color television sold used the RCA shadow mask concept, in the spring of that year Sony introduced their first Trinitron sets.

Shadow mask
In 1938 German inventor Werner Flechsig first patented (received 1941, France) the seemingly simple concept of placing a sheet of metal just behind the front of the tube, and punching small holes in it. The holes would be used to focus the beam just before it hit the screen. Independently, Al Schroeder at RCA worked on a similar arrangement, but using three electron guns as well. When the lab leader explained the possibilities of the design to his superiors, he was promised unlimited manpower and funds to get it working. Over a period of only a few months, several prototype color televisions using the system were produced.

The guns, arranged in a delta pattern at the back of the tube, were aimed to focus on the metal plate and scanned it as normal. For much of the time during the scan, the beams would hit the back of the plate and be stopped. However, when the beams passed a hole they would continue to the phosphor in front of the plate. In this way, the plate ensured that the beams were perfectly aligned with the colored phosphor dots. This still left the problem of focusing on the correct colored dot. Normally the beams from the three guns would each be large enough to light up all three colored dots on the screen. The mask helped by mechanically attenuating the beam to a small size just before it hit the screen.

But the real genius of the idea is that the beams approached the metal plate from different angles. After being cut off by the mask, the beams would continue forward at slightly different angles, hitting the screens at slightly different locations. The spread was a function of the distance between the guns at the back of the tube, and the distance between the mask plate and the screen. By painting the colored dots at the correct locations on the screen, and leaving some room between them to avoid interactions, the guns would be guaranteed to hit the right colored spot.

Although the system was simple, it had a number of serious practical problems.

As the beam swept the mask, the vast majority of its energy was deposited on the mask, not the screen in front of it. A typical mask of the era might have only 15% of its surface open. To produce an image as bright as the one on a traditional B&W television, the electron guns in this hypothetical shadow mask system would have to be five times more powerful. Additionally, the dots on the screen were deliberately separated in order to avoid being hit by the wrong gun, so much of the screen was black. This required even more power in order to light up the resulting image. And as the power was divided up among three of these much more powerful guns, the cost of implementation was much higher than for a similar B&W set.

The amount of power deposited on the color screen was so great that thermal loading was a serious problem. The energy the shadow mask absorbs from the electron gun in normal operation causes it to heat up and expand, which leads to blurred or discolored images (see doming). Signals that alternated between light and dark caused cycling that further increased the difficulty of keeping the mask from warping.

Furthermore, the geometry required complex systems to keep the three beams properly positioned across the screen. If you consider the beam when it is sweeping across the middle area of the screen, the beams from the individual guns are each traveling the same distance and meet the holes in the mask at equal angles. In the corners of the screen some beams have to travel farther and all of them meet the hole at a different angle than at the middle of the screen. These issues required additional electronics and adjustments to maintain correct beam positioning.

Market introduction
During development, RCA was not sure that they could make the shadow mask system work. Although simple in concept, it was difficult to build in practice, especially at a reasonable price point. The company optioned several other technologies, including the Geer tube, in case the system didn't work out. When the first tubes were produced in 1950, these other lines were dropped.

Wartime advances in electronics had opened up large swaths of high frequency transmission to practical use, and in 1948 the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) started a series of meetings on the use of what would become the UHF channels. At the time there were very few television sets in use in the United States, so the stakeholder groups quickly settled on the idea of using UHF for a new, incompatible, color format. These meetings eventually selected a competing semi-mechanical field-sequential color system being promoted by CBS. However, in the midst of the meetings, RCA announced their efforts on compatible color, but too late to influence the proceedings. CBS color was introduced in 1950.

However, the promise of the RCA system was so great that the National Television System Committee (NTSC) took up its cause. Between 1950 and 1953 they carried out a huge study on human color perception, and used that information to improve RCA's basic concept. RCA had, by this time, produced experimental shadow mask sets that were an enormous leap in quality over any competitors. The system was dim, complex, large, power hungry and expensive for all these reasons, but provided a usable color image, and most importantly, was compatible with existing B&W signals. This had not been an issue in 1948 when the first FCC meetings were held, but by 1953 the number of B&W sets had exploded; there was no longer any way they could simply be abandoned.

When the NTSC proposed that their new standard be ratified by the FCC, CBS dropped its interest in its own system. Everyone in the industry wanting to produce a set then licensed RCA's patents, and by the mid-1950s there were a number of sets commercially available. However, color sets were much more expensive than B&W sets of the same size, and required constant adjustment by field staff. By the early 1960s they still represented a small percentage of the television market in North America. The numbers exploded in the early 1960s, with 5,000 sets being produced a week in 1963.

Manufacture
Shadow masks are made using a photochemical machining process. It starts out with a sheet of steel or invar alloy that is coated with photoresist, which is baked to solidify it, exposed to UV light through photomasks, developed to remove unexposed resist, the metal is etched using liquid acid, and then the photoresist is removed. One photomask has larger dark spots than the other, this creates tapered apertures. The shadow mask is installed to the screen using metal pieces or a rail or frame  that is fused to the funnel or the screen glass respectively, holding the shadow mask in tension to minimize warping (if the mask is flat, used in flat screen CRT computer monitors) and allowing for higher image brightness and contrast. Bimetal springs may be used in CRTs used in TVs to compensate for warping that occurs as the electron beam heats the shadow mask, causing thermal expansion.

Improvements, market acceptance
By the 1960s the first RCA patents were ending, while at the same time a number of technical improvements were being introduced. A number of these were worked into the GE Porta-Color set of 1966, which was an enormous success. By 1968 almost every company had a competing design, and color television moved from an expensive option to mainstream devices.

Doming problems due to thermal expansion of the shadow mask were solved in several ways. Some companies used a thermostat to measure the temperature and adjust the scanning to match the expansion. Bi-metallic shadow masks, where differential expansion rates offset the issue, became common in the late 1960s. Invar and similar low-expansion alloys were introduced in the 1980s These materials suffered from easy magnetization that can affect the colors, but this could be generally solved by including an automatic demagnetizing feature. The last solution to be introduced was the "stretched mask", where the mask was welded to a frame, typically glass, at high temperatures. The frame was then welded to the inside of the tube. When the assembly cooled, the mask was under great tension, which no amount of heating from the guns would be able to remove.

Improving brightness was another major line of work in the 1960s. The use of rare-earth phosphors produced brighter colors and allowed the strength of the electron beams to be reduced slightly. Better focusing systems, especially automatic systems that meant the set spent more time closer to perfect focus, allowed the dots to grow larger on the screen. The Porta-Color used both of these advances and re-arranged the guns to lie beside each other instead of in a triangle, allowing the dots to be extended vertically into slots that covered much more of the screen surface. This design, sometimes known as a "slot mask", became common in the 1970s.

Another change that was widely introduced in the early 1970s was the use of a black material in the spaces around the inside of the phosphor pattern. This paint absorbed ambient light coming from the room, lowering the amount that was reflected back to the viewer. In order to make this work effectively, the phosphor dots were reduced in size, lowering their brightness. However, the improved contrast compared to ambient conditions allowed the faceplate to be made much more clear, allowing more light from the phosphor to reach the viewer and the actual brightness to increase. Grey-tinted faceplates dimmed the image, but provided better contrast, because ambient light was attenuated before it reached the phosphors, and a second time as it returned to the viewer. Light from the phosphors was attenuated only once. This method changed over time, with TV tubes growing progressively more black over time.

In manufacturing color CRTs, the shadow masks or aperture grilles were also used to expose photoresist on the faceplate to ultraviolet light sources, accurately positioned to simulate arriving electrons for one color at a time. This photoresist, when developed, permitted phosphor for only one color to be applied where required. The process was used a total of three times, once for each color. (The shadow mask or aperture grille had to be removable and accurately re-positionable for this process to succeed.)

title: Shadow mask