By Tony Long, Wired
1893: What is generally regarded as America's first film-production studio, Thomas Edison's "Black Maria," opens in West Orange, New Jersey.
Black Maria (pronounced "Mah-RYE-uh") was known more formally as the Kinetographic Theater -- after the Kinetograph, a forerunner of the movie camera. It was built on the grounds of Edison's laboratories. The Kinetoscope (a forerunner of the projector) had been developed there as well, by one of the inventor's underlings.
Black Maria (nicknamed by assistants who likened its cramped quarters to the black marias, or paddy wagons, used by the police) was where Edison staged his first public demonstrations of films made for the Kinetoscope viewer.
One of the earliest films made there was The Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, known more colloquially as Fred Ott's Sneeze. And that's exactly what it was: a short film of a guy called Fred Ott, sneezing for the camera.
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Fred Ott's Sneeze and other short features from the 1890's from Edison's Black Maria film-production studio.
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