Thomas A. Edison and His Kinetographic Motion Pictures (Paperback)

by Charles Musser (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover
Much controversy has surrounded Thomas A. Edison's role in the birth of motion pictures. His earliest biographers gave all honor to him; later historians gave credit to his assistants or to foreign inventors whose recognition Edison stole. Charles Musser provides a balanced assessment, arguing that while Edison left the day-to-day experimentation to his talented employees, he provided the ideas and encouragement as well as financial support. Without him, the technical hurdles would not have been overcome so quickly.

As time went on, and innovations in the motion picture business shifted from improving machines to improving the moving pictures themselves and the methods of exhibiting them, Edison's Laboratory lost its advantage. After three decades of patent wars and attempted monopolization of cameras and projectors, the battle moved away from the inventor and toward the producers and nickelodeon owners. Edison briefly experimented with a home movie projector, to steal a march on his rivals, but he way ahead of his time. After thirty years, he closed down his movie studio and moved on to other projects.

This brief, informative story of Edison's key contributions to the invention of motion pictures is heavily illustrated and beautifully designed.

About the Author
Charles Musser is an assistant professor of Film Studies and American Studies at Yale University. He is the author of "The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907", and "Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S. Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company."

Product Details

• Paperback: 62 pages
• Publisher: Rutgers University Press (September 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813522102
• ISBN-13: 978-0813522104
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,949,098 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Edison's apologia, October 14, 2000

By	Theodoros Natsinas (Thessaloniki, Greece) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is very well written, illustrated and produced; also it is a very good introduction on Edison's contribution to motion pictures but, while it doesn't seem to falsify the actual truth, the author, Charles Musser one of the major historians of early cinema development, bends backwards to exonerate Edison's less than savory practices; to present Edison as the "inventor of motion pictures"; to claim the development of cinema for the US; and to make totally unsupported claims that this was a beneficial turn of events for all cinema / motion pictures!