Meanwhile a secret race to the screen was taking place. Probably the first to project, outside the Edison laboratories, was the late Major Woodville Latham, a hero of the Confederacy, from Virginia, who opened a flickering show at about 140 Broadway in May of 1895. Meanwhile in France, Louis and Auguste Lumière of Lyons, and Robert W. Paul of London achieved the screen, and in Washington, Thomas Armat brought forth a projector commercially shown in Atlanta in September, 1895. All of these machines were based on Edison's peep show Kinetoscope and used his films primarily.
Communication was slow then. When the showmen of New York began to demand a screen machine, the Edison agents, Raff & Gammon of New York, investigated Armat's invention, named it the Vitascope, and made a deal at West Orange to have it manufactured and offered as an Edison device--because the market looked to Edison, who was indeed the father of the motion picture.
The first showing was announced for April 20, 1896. The Vitascope was to be the last act on the variety, or vaudeville, program at Koster & Bial's Music Hall at Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street, New York. Delays, however, were to postpone the opening until the evening of April 23rd. The latter date is, therefore, recorded as the real birthday of the motion picture as a form of public entertainment.
It is a fine evening and the house is packed. Silk hats and evening clothes are plentiful. Some of the bloods of the town are here. Thomas Armat is at the projection machine. Thomas Edison sits quietly in a box, acclaimed by the crowd as he was to be acclaimed thirty years later when he modestly visited the opening the great Paramount Theatre, ten blocks north of Koster & Bial's, but now, as on that later occasion, he is silent.
At last the pictures are thrown upon a twenty-foot screen which has been set in a gilded frame. There is the finale of Hoyt Milk White Flag, a dash of a prize fight, Annabelle Moore--the dancer--waves rolling in on Manhattan Beach. Marvelous! gasps the audience. Bravo! shouts the gallery boys. As the waves roll in, the first-night audience --at least those in the front rows--jump from their seats and move back through the aisles to avoid being deluged, thus paying involuntary tribute to the reality of motion pictures. Sheepishly they return to their seats to applaud.
Praise! Words of congratulations! Excitement! Newspaper comment! Everybody is speaking of the Vitascope.
The moving picture had arrived. It was now a form of public amusement. Empty stores, holes in the wall, were soon to become alive with moving pictures. A good working machine was put on the market. The public was interested and intrigued. Traveling Vitascope showings aroused the country to eager interest in the new invention. Men, women, and children flocked to see pictures that moved. It was thrilling, exciting--something new under the sun. Farmers left their plows, farm wives their chores, to see Edison's new wonder. An interest was aroused that was to spread to the smallest hamlet, encircle the globe, enlist more people than any other instrument of entertainment the world ever knew.
And with the increased interest came a demand for more films. From far and wide came the call. People would gladly pay to see moving pictures, but they soon tired of seeing the same pictures over and over again. Novelty in pictures was needed. The first picture makers had been able to induce some of the Broadway stars and some of the athletic heroes of the country, notably the prize fighters, to appear before the camera.
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