| 1894 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| January 7 |
Fred Ott's Sneeze is the first film
registered for copyright in the US. |
|
| January 9 |
First battery operated telephone switchboard is opened at Lexington, Massachusetts
by the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company. |
|
| April 1 |
Manufacture and sale of Kinetoscope equipment is
transferred to the Edison Manufacturing Company. |
|
| April 14 |
Holland Bros Kinetoscope Parlor opens near Times Square at 115 Broadway, New
York—formerly a shoe shop—with 10 peepshow Kinetoscopes showing either of two selections
of five Edison films for 25 cents. First day’s takings: $120. |
|
| September 1 |
General Post Office introduces half-penny UK postage rate for postcards,
precipitating a boom in picture postcards, reaching its peak in the decade before the First World
War and causing extensive photographic documentation of British and foreign townscapes and topography. |
|
September/
October |
 Following the acquisition by their father Antoine of the Bouly's
cinematographe patent (Bouly having been unable to pay the annual renewal fee), Auguste and
Louis Lumière use their newly constructed cinématographe to film La Sortie des Ouvriers de
l’Usine Lumière (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory—below) in Lyon. The image
format begins with a 5:4 aspect ratio, as in the actual size frames shown here (above right),
but changes to 4:3 in conformity with
Dickson’s design for Edison.
 |
|
| October 18 |
New York-based Continental Commerce Company (which becomes the Warwick Trading
Company in 1897) opens a 12-machine Kinetoscope parlour at 70 Oxford Street, London, following a private
view the previous evening and a dinner at the Horse Shoe Hotel in Tottenham Court Road. |
|
| November 30 |
A Kinetoscope Parlour is opened in Australia at 148 Pitt Street, Sydney by
theatre impressario James McMahon. The parlour has five Edison machines, each showing a
different 20-second film; the admission charge is 1s. |
|
November/
December |
Because Edison has failed to patent the Kinetoscope in the UK, Robert W Paul
(1869-1943) copies the design and instals 15 machines in the Earl’s Court exhibition hall in London. |
|
| l |
Albert Puskás, younger brother of the late Théodore
Puskás, starts Telefon Hirmondó (Telephone Herald) news service in Pest (Budapest) over a
special 168-mile long cable running under the windows of houses for 28 news and information
bulletins during 14 hours a day. Service runs until late 1920s and achieves 6,000 subscribers. |
|
| l |
US monthly trade journal Billboard Advertising is launched. |
à 1897 July 1 |
