| 1908 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| January |
Australian feature film of The Story of the Kelly Gang
is premièred in UK at the Assembly Rooms, Bath. |
|
| January |
First film studio opens in Japan, built by Kenichi Kawaura of Yoshizawa Company after
visiting Edison in the US. |
|
| February |
Svenska Biografteatern film production company is formed at Kristianstad. A member
of the company is Charles Magnusson, an accountant and amateur photographer who has been working on
synchronising films and gramophone records. |
|
| March 1 |
Edison Company forms the Association of Edison Licensees in an effort to regulate
film distribution practices. Biograph refuses to join and forms a separate consortium. |
â September 9 |
| May 20 |
Police ruling in Berlin leads to the issuing of censor's certificates for films. |
|
| June 18 |
Letter published in Nature from A A Campbell Swinton describes the essential
characteristics of an all-electric television system. |
à 1911
Campbell-Swinton's letter |
| July 8 |
Kinemacolor is demonstrated at a scientific
meeting in Paris. The Lumière Brothers are in the audience. |
â December 9 |
| July 14 |
D W Griffith's first film, The Adventures of Dolly, opens at the Union Square
Theatre in New York. |
|
| August 17 |
Fantasmagorie, first animated story film, lasting two minutes, is shown at the
Théâtre du Gymnase, Paris. Made by Emile Cohl for Léon Gaumont. |
|
| September 9 |
Motion Picture Patents Company, known as The Trust, is formed in the US by leading film
companies to protect their patents and copyrights by pooling patents on equipment, mostly held by
Edison and Biograph. Among the members are Biograph, Edison, Vitagraph,
Essenay, Kalem, Kleine, Lubin, Méliès, Pathé and Selig.
Among other things, the Trust establishes a standard price of
half a cent per foot for film prints that are rented on a weekly basis rather than sold. The effect is to
strengthen the American industry, leading to a reduction in imports. The European producers respond by
making films based on literary or historical subjects that will be less directly competitive with the
current vogue styles of American-made films. |
â December 18 |
| l |
About now, Pathé Frères begins the practice of hiring film prints rather than selling
them outright. In this year, the company releases twice as many films in the US as all American producers
combined. |
à CIEF, 1909 |
| September 26 |
An early instance of software bundling and political audio-visual messages: Edison
Phonographs are advertised in the Saturday Evening Post with recordings by the Democratic and
Republican candidates for the US presidency in the forthcoming election. |
|
| September |
First film taken from an aeroplane by Pathé cinematographer L P Bouvillain—a year
before the first still photograph taken from an aeroplane. |
|
| October |
Columbia Record Company puts the first double-sided audio disc on the market. |
|
| November 17 |
Assassination du Duc de Guise, the first narrative film to have specially
composed music (by Camille Saint-Saëns), is premiered in Paris. |
|
| November |
British trade paper The Bioscope proposes a declining scale of film hire charges
from first-run to outright sales of prints to travelling showmen. |
|
| December 9 |
G A Smith demonstrates Kinemacolor to the Royal
Society of Arts in London and five days later (December 14) gives a public exhibition. |
à 1909 |
| December 18 |
Motion Picture Patents Company begins issuing licences under the
pooled patent arrangement. |
à 1910 |
| |
Edison resumes research into sound films at the company's Decatur Avenue studio in the
Bronx, New York. The new work is based, without credit, on the ideas of Auguste
Baron. [0025] |
|
| l |
Charles Chaplin is first employed by Fred Karno for his ‘London Comedians’. |
|
| l |
Pathé Journal newsreel is first screened in Paris; distribution extends to the
whole of France during the following year. |
|
| l |
American film exhibitor Carl Laemmle imports the Synchroscope, a sound film system
invented in Germany by Jules Greenbaum, for sale to theatres. Initially priced at $750, it is soon
selling at $395-500. [0025] |
|
| l |
Pathé builds a film studio at Okubo, Toyko. Yokota Company builds one in Kyoto. |
|
| l |
There are now 87 cinemas in Paris (there having been only 10 two years earlier); 300
new cinemas open in Berlin. |
|
| l |
UK has three film exhibition companies with combined capital of £110,000. |
|
| l |
First Norwegian fiction film is Fiskerlivets farer: et drama på havet. |
|
| l |
Alexander Drankov's Stenka Razin is the first Russian feature-length film. |
|
| l |
• Lin Ten-lun of the Feng Tai Photo Shop, Beijing, directs the first Chinese dramatic
film, Tingchun Mountain.
• Metropolitan Films produces the first in Cuba: El Cabildo de Romualda, directed by Enrique Diaz
Quesada. |
|
| l |
Gramophones are now installed in 18m German households. |
|
| l |
First British outdoor telephone kiosk is installed at Folkestone, Kent by the
National Telephone Company. The booths are designed to blend with their surroundings. |
|
| l |
A Nobel Prize is awarded to Gabriel Lippmann for his work on colour photography. |
|
| l |
Arthur Pearson sells the Daily Express newspaper to a group of Liberal
backers; the circulation is 320,000. |
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