“The Wizard of Menlo Park” and GE Founder Thomas Edison’s many inventions – from the lightbulb to the phonograph – have changed the way we live in countless ways. Perhaps less well known is his contribution to the creation of motion pictures. Hogwarts’ wizards on the big screen, in fact, owe a debt to the original Dumbledore and his lab full of brilliant inventors.
Edison and collaborator W.L.K. Dickson created one of the first movie cameras, the, kinetograph, and accompanying movie viewing system, the kinetoscope, in 1892. A handsome DVD set of 140 of the first films from the movie studio Edison set up next to his Menlo Park laboratory is available here. To celebrate today’s release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, we picked our three favorites from the Edison film archive.
Anticipating the world’s insatiable demand for funny videos of cats, Edison’s studio presented Professor Welton’s “Boxing Cats,” in July 1894.
Crossing the line a little, the studio moved on to the boxing Gordon sisters, in 1901.
Edison could pull off the high-brow as well as the low, though – this is the only known motion picture footage of American bard Mark Twain, taken by Edison in 1909.
Enjoy HP7, Muggles!
