| 1906 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| April 6 |
First animated cartoon film is copyrighted in the US. |
|
| April |
Walter Booth makes the first UK animated film for the Charles Urban Trading
Company: The Hand of the Artist. |
|
| April |
Alberini and Santoni studio in Rome changes its name to Cines. |
|
| April |
First UK pay phone kiosk opens in the Ludgate Circus Post Office, London. |
|
| April 26 |
First film screening in Hawaii. |
|
| May |
First Finnish films are made by Atelier Apollo, owned by K E Stahlberg (see
1904 April 3). Company produces 110 short films up to its
closure in 1913—nearly half Finland’s entire film output for the period. |
|
| July |
George Albert Smith makes the first test film in Kinemacolor outside his house at
Southwick, near Brighton, Sussex. He has abandoned a three-colour approach for two-colour. |
â November
 |
| August 11 |
Eugène Lauste, now funded by London Cinematograph and
with a workshop in Brixton, London applies for a patent on a sound-on-film process. Sound energy from a
microphone is fed to a thin metal strip that vibrates and focuses the light through a slit onto the
film. [0025] |
|
| August 22 |
First Victor Victrola gramophone is made. Made by the recently formed Victor Talking
Machine Company at Camden, NJ, its main innovation is a horn enclosed in the cabinet. It sells for $200. |
|
| October 3 or November 22 |
International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin adopts SOS as the international
distress signal, replacing CQD. |
|
| October |
Pathé record company introduces discs. |
|
| November 6 |
 Nordisk
Films Kompagni is founded by Ole Olsen, a farmhand turned fairground showman,
in the Valby suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark. Its first studio, the oldest still surviving in the world
[photographed in 1912, right], is built this year. The company quickly becomes second only to Pathé
in world film production. |
à 1914 |
| November |
G A Smith's Kinemacolor process is patented. With a camera
speed of 32 frames a second, alternate frames are shot through red-orange and blue-green sections of a
filter in front of the camera and projected in similar manner. |
à 1908 |
| December 16 |
Pathé opens a purpose-built cinema, Omnia Pathé, on the boulevard Montmartre in Paris. |
|
| l |
Pathécolor film system patented by Pathé company in France. The mechanical stencilling
technique (au pochoir) allows up to six colours to be applied to black and white films. |
|
| December 16/24 |
Première at the Athanaeum Hall, Melbourne, of the first film said to last more than
an hour: The Story of the Kelly Gang, directed by Charles Tait and produced by J & N Tait
mainly at Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia for £1,000. It grosses £25,000 from release in Australia
and UK.
Australia produces 21 of the 35 ‘feature’ films made
worldwide in the following five years (1907-11). Its length (4,000 ft) was variously described as from
running from 40 minutes to over an hour, depending on the projection speed. |
à 1918 |
| December 24 |
Voice/music radio broadcast made by Professor Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1868-1932) from
the National Electric Signalling Company’s experimental station at Brant Rock, Massachusetts, is
heard several hundred miles away. The music is Handel’s ‘Largo’. |
|
| l |
Kinematograph Manufacturers Association formed in UK. |
See also 1912 October |
| l |
Nickelodeons begin to open at a rapid rate in the US. These purpose-built cinemas are
so called because of the admission charge: five cents (a nickel). In the UK nickelodeons are known as
'penny gaffs'. |
|
| l |
First purpose-built Australian cinema is opened by the British exhibitor T J West. |
see also 1909 |
| |
First cinema is opened in Iceland by Alfred Lind, who later becomes a director. |
|
| l |
 Construction begins of the Alexandra cinema in Dock Street, Blackburn, Lancashire on
the site of stables and a windmill—making it probably the first such
building started in the UK. However, it does
not open until Easter 1909 by which time other purpose-built cinemas have opened.
[Picture source: Blackburn with Darwen Library Service] |
à 1907 |
| l |
The Police Commission in Berlin establishes pre-release censorship of films. |
|
| l |
First Algerian film, La Prière du Muezzin, made by Félix Mesguiche, who makes the
first Algerian drama film, Ali Boufe à l’huile the following year. |
à 1963 |
| l |
Dictograph electro-mechanical loudspeaker introduced in New York by Hutchinson
Acoustic Company. |
|
| l |
Disc-playing jukebox with a pre-selective mechanism, the John Gabel Automatic Entertainer,
is introduced by the Automatic Machine and Tool Co, Chicago, holding 24 10-inch discs. |
|
| l |
First Brazilian drama film, Os Estranguladores, directed by Antonio Leal
and Isaac Sandenberg, is based on material from police records. |
|
| l |
British Sunday newspaper The Observer bought by Lord Northcliffe, founder
of the Daily Mail. |
ß 1900 |
