Posts tagged with ‘thomas edison’

Morning EPIC RAP BATTLE OF HISTORY: Tesla vs Edison

The sparks fly when the masters of 20th century invention try to settle some scores through rhyme.

The first film adaptation of Frankenstein was in 1910, done in Thomas Edison’s studio

Frankenstein is a 1910 film made by Edison Studios that was written and directed by J. Searle Dawley. It was the first motion picture adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The unbilled cast included Augustus Phillips as Dr. Frankenstein, Charles Ogle as the Monster, and Mary Fuller as the doctor’s fiancée.

One of the first films was a short about boxing cats

Well before the internet, people found cats doing silly things endlessly amusing. In 1894, Thomas Edison and his technicians made this film about a man who traveled the country with his boxing cats.

Professor Welton’s Trained Cat Circus boasted cats that rode bicycles, turned somersaults and walked through fire. But the boxing cats were the most popular of his attractions playing New York vaudeville houses and roof gardens during the summer of 1894.

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IHC After Dark: Japanese acrobats from 1904

Filmed by none other than Thomas Edison

Re-illuminating an early light bulb after it’s been buried for 100 years

This light bulb, from 1912, was buried in a time capsule in NELA Park, the home of General Electric for 100 years. GE recently unburied the time capsule and in this video, they’re slowly juicing the bulb up after it’s been cold for a century. What else was in the time capsule? Four other light bulbs, packed in sand. Well that’s kind of disappointing.

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A short history of the greatness of Thomas Edison

Today would mark Thomas Edison’s 165th birthday, so here’s just a small tribute to the man, the myth and the legend.

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Thomas Edison’s film of the Statue of Liberty in 1898

It’s amazing to look at these films of Thomas Edison, where he was going around filming everything he could. It’s just too bad this wasn’t in color, since the Statue was only about 15 years old at this time and probably had just started to green over, or had recently turned green from its original copper color.

Also check out Thomas Edison’s film of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1899 and his film of a San Francisco bath house in 1897.

Thomas Edison film of a bath house in San Francisco in 1897

In the late 1800s, Thomas Edison knew what an awesome invention film was and he took a film camera with him pretty much everywhere, making him the world’s first annoying guy with a camera attached to one hand. But his films, like this one of a San Francisco bath house (not the gay kind) gives a unique perspective on life in the 1890s.

It looked like a lot of fun, though I’m sure the water was full of polio and smallpox or whatever.

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Thomas Edison’s 1899 film taken as he was crossing the Brooklyn Bridge

In 1899, Edison was on a train crossing the Brooklyn Bridge and took this short film.

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