| 1891 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| January |
The Phonogram, monthly ‘official organ of the phonograph companies
of the United States’, edited by V H McRae, is first published in New York. Effectively
Edison’s house journal, it argues in favour of business use as a dictation machine and against
‘coin-in-the-slot’ music applications. |
|
| March 14 |
Completion of laying the first submarine telephone cable across the English Channel. |
|
| March 18 |
Edison company buys its first 50ft lengths of celluloid-based film from Merwin Hulbert.
At first it is used without perforations and advances horizontally. |
|
| May 22 |
Edison stages the first public demonstration of peep-show moving pictures at his
West Orange laboratories in New Jersey to members of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs.
The film is 18mm wide. |
|
| May 26 |
Wordsworth Donisthorpe (barrister of 32
Pembridge Villas, Bayswater, London W) and William Carr Crofts (gentleman of Westminster Chambers,
7 Victoria Street, London) are granted a US patent (no 452,966) for a camera capable of 'producing
instantaneous photographs'. |
|
| August 24 |
Kinetoscope is patented by Edison and W K Laurie Dickson. |
|
| l |
William Gray of Hartford, Connecticut founds the Gray Telephone Pay Station
Company to exploit his patent for coin-operated telephone boxes
by selling units to American stores. |
|
| l |
North American Phonograph Company, now under Edison's control, abandons the equipment
leasing policy in favour of outright sales. Machines cost $150 each. |
|
| l |
Despite the Edison company's negative attitude to the use of phonographs for
entertainment, a drugstore in New Orleans is reported to be averaging takings of $500 a month
from one coin-in-the-slot phonograph. |
|
| l |
Gerald Philips founds a company, Philips Gloeilampenfabrik, based in Eindhoven,
Netherlands, to manufacture light bulbs and other electrical equipment. |
|
| l |
 Arthur-Louis Ducos Du Hauron patents a
technique for anaglyph stereoscopic photography, using red and green
filtration. He gives lantern shows with the technique. |
|
