Celebrations Today – August 31
Holidays and observances
- Baloch-Pakhtun Unity Day (Balochs and Pashtuns, International observance)
- Christian feast day:
- Day of Solidarity and Freedom (Poland)
- Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Kyrgyzstan from the Soviet Union in 1991.
- Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Malaya from the United Kingdom in 1957.
- Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Trinidad and Tobago from the United Kingdom in 1962.
- National Language Day (Moldova)
- National Trail Mix Day (United States)
- North Borneo Self-government Day (Sabah, Borneo)
Celebrations Today – USA: August 31
National Matchmaker Day
National Diatomaceous Earth Day
National Trail Mix Day
Day* – Proclamation
September National Days
National Eat Outside Day
National Love Litigating Lawyers Day
National We Love Memoirs Day
Today in US History: August 31
Edison Receives Patent for Kinetographic Camera
Edison Kinetoscopic Recording of a Sneeze,
copyright January 9, 1894.
View the film which was reconstructed from the paper print.
Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze
by W. K. L. Dickson, one of Edison’s assistants,
January 7, 1894.
On August 31, 1897, Thomas Edison received a patent for the kinetographic camera, “a certain new and useful Improvement in Kinetoscopes,” the forerunner of the motion picture film projector. Edison and his assistant, W. K. L. Dickson, had begun work on the project—to enliven sound recordings with moving pictures—in hopes of boosting sales of the phonograph, which Edison had invented in 1877. Unable to synchronize the two media, he introduced the kinetoscope, a device for viewing moving pictures without sound—on which work had begun in 1889. Patents were filed for the kinetoscope and kinetograph in August 1891.
The kinetoscope (viewer), which Edison initially considered an insignificant toy, had become an immediate success about a decade earlier. The invention was soon replaced, however, by screen projectors that made it possible for more than one person to view the novel silent movies at a time.
The Black Maria, Edison’s First Motion Picture Studio,
West Orange, New Jersey,
used between December 1892 and January 1901.
Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies
Edison and Dickson continued to experiment with motion pictures in the late 1880s and into the 1890s. Dickson designed the Black Maria, the first movie studio, which was completed in 1893. The name was derived from the slang for the police paddy wagons that the studio was said to resemble. Between 1893 and 1903, Edison produced more than 250 films at the Black Maria, including many of those found in the Edison Motion Pictures collection of the Library of Congress. Most of the films are short, as it was believed that people would not stand the “flickers” for more than ten minutes.
Turn-of-the-century copyright law provided protection for photographs but not for motion pictures. Therefore, a number of early film producers protected their work by copyrighting paper contact prints (paper prints) of the film’s individual frames. By the time that the law was amended in 1912, some 3,500 paper prints had been deposited for copyright registration. This practice proved fortuitous, as many early films have been lost due to disintegration and the high combustibility caused by early film’s nitrate base. Many of these paper contact prints were converted back to film in the 1950s, and hundreds were digitized in the 1990s.
Three Acrobats,
Thomas A. Edison, Inc.,
copyright March 20, 1899.
The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920
- View the motion pictures in the collection Inventing Entertainment: the Early Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies. Also, see the motion pictures in The American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 collection. Included are films produced by Edison’s company and films produced by American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, Edison’s chief competitor.
- View images of the Edison Recording Laboratories in Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present to see photos and written historical and descriptive data of the Edison’s laboratories in New Jersey.
- Search the Today in History Archive on invention for features on many inventors and the fruits of their imaginations and hard work. See, for example, the features on Alexander Graham Bell‘s photophone and his telephone and the feature on Samuel Morse’s telegraph.
- Browse other motion picture collections such as:
Today in History – August 31-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia