Thomas Edison - WHat an awesome guy!!!

"I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion ...."
--Thomas A. Edison, 1888

Edison's laboratory was responsible for the invention of the Kinetograph (a motion picture camera) and the Kinetoscope (a peep-hole motion picture viewer). Most of this work was performed by Edison's assistant, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, beginning in 1888. Motion pictures became a successful entertainment industry in less than a decade, with single-viewer Kinetoscopes giving way to films projected for mass audiences. The Edison Manufacturing Co. (later known as Thomas A. Edison, Inc.) not only built the apparatus for filming and projecting motion pictures, but also produced films for public consumption. Most early examples were actualities showing famous people, news events, disasters, people at work, new modes of travel and technology, scenic views, expositions, and other leisure activities. As actualities declined in popularity, the company's production emphasis shifted to comedies and dramas.
This collection features 341 Edison films, including 127 titles also available in other American Memory motion picture groupings. The earliest example is a camera test made in 1891, followed by other tests and a wide variety of actualities and dramas through the year 1918, when Edison's company ceased film production. The presentation also offers a brief history of Edison's work with motion pictures as well as an overview of the different film genres produced by the Edison company.

Eadweard Muybridge

Known as the 'father of the motion picture', Eadweard Muybridge's early photographic experiments laid the foundation for modern cinema, with his study, The Horse In Motion (1882), regarded by many as the first ever moving picture. Developing his keen interest in photography whilst recuperating from a stage coach crash in 1860, Eadweard Muybridge moved to America upon his recovery, joining a San Franciscan photo business. Quickly establishing a reputation for landscape work, he was appointed director of photographic surveys for the U.S. Government in 1868, conducting studies of numerous remote areas, including the newly purchased Alaska. 

A capable and successful commercial photographer, Eadweard began to consider rapid motion photography in 1872 when approached by Californian racehorse owner, Leland Stanford. Stanford had reputedly laid a wager on the contentious issue of whether a galloping horse was ever airborne. Using wet plates Eadweard produced faint, highly underexposed plates, proving Stanford's assertion that all four hooves did, in fact, leave the ground at the same time.