Newark Athlete

For more information and to download this film, please visit www.loc.gov/it...
Produced May-June 1891, this experimental film was one of the first made in America at the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, N.J. The filmmakers were W.K.L. Dickson and William Heise, both of whom were employed as inventors and engineers in the industrial research facility owned by Thomas Edison. Heise and especially Dickson made important technical contributions during 1891-1893, leading to the invention of the world’s first successful motion picture camera-the Edison Kinetograph-and to the playback device required for viewing early peepshow films-the Edison Kinetoscope. Named to the National Film Registry in 2010.