| 1906 |
 Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references. |
links and notes |
| March |
Pathé's Paris factories have a production capacity of 200 items of equipmnent—mainly projectors and cameras—a month. |
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| April 6 |
First animated cartoon film is copyrighted in the US. |
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| April |
First weekly trade paper specificallty for the US cinema industry, Views and Films Index is launched with financial backing from Pathé and Vitagraph. |
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| April |
Biograph successfully defends against Edison's patent litigation in the US Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York. |
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| April |
Walter Booth makes the first UK animated film for the Charles Urban Trading Company: The Hand of the Artist, using chalk drawings on a blackboard. |
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| April |
Alberini and Santoni studio in Rome changes its name to Cines. |
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| April |
First UK pay phone kiosk opens in the Ludgate Circus Post Office, London. |
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| April 26 |
First film screening in Hawaii. |
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| May 13 |
A 'film festival' (fête cinématographique) is organised by the Société Populaire des Beaux-Arts at the Trocadéro Théâtre in Paris. The three-hour ptogramme is seen by 4,000 people and repeated two weeks later with more films.. |
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| 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. |
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| June |
In nine months Pathé's French laboratories have doubled output to 80,000 feet of print film a day. The company is releasing up to six new titles a week. It is averaging advance US orders of 75 copies per title. It has a staff of 300 women making colour prints by the stencilling method while a mechanised system is being developed.[0071] |
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| 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. |
> November
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| July |
New French legislation requires all workers to have a weekly rest day, giving them more time to visit cinemas. |
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| 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] |
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| 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. |
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| August 30 |
French film production company L'Eclipse is formed as an offshoot of the Paris office of Charles Urban Trading Company, UK's largest distributor. |
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| October |
Pathé record company introduces discs. |
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| November 3 |
International Radio Telegraphic Convention in Berlin adopts SOS as the international distress signal, replacing CQD, to become effective from 1 July 1908. |
> 1999 February 1 |
| 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. |
> 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. |
> 1908 |
| November |
Pathé's films ales: 100,000 feet a day. |
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| December 3 |
Gaumont film company is incorporated in France with capital of Ffr 2.5m. |
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| December 15 |
Pathé-Frères opens its first purpose-built cinema, the 300-seat Omnia-Pathé, next door to the Théâtre des Variétés and opposite the Musée Grévin on the boulevard Montmartre in Paris. |
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| 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’. |
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| December 26 |
 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 the UK, where it is released just over a year later. Its length (4,000 ft) was variously described as running from 40 minutes to over an hour, depending on the projection speed. |
Australia produces 21 of the 35 ‘feature’ films made worldwide in the next five years (1907-11)
This film was released on DVD in 2007 by the National Film and Sound Archive |
| • |
Pathécolor film system is patented by the Pathé company in France. The mechanical stencilling technique (au pochoir) allows up to six colours to be applied to black and white films. |
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| • |
Pathé's output of equipment at Belleville has increased to 250 units a month. [0068] |
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| • |
French studios begin to produce fictional film series, eg, Pathé's Boireau with André Deed, followed within the next four years by most of the successful studios.. |
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| • |
Kinematograph Manufacturers Association is formed in the UK. |
See also 1912 October |
| • |
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'. |
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| • |
First purpose-built Australian cinema is opened by the British exhibitor T J West. |
see also 1909 |
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First cinema is opened in Iceland by Alfred Lind, who later becomes a director. |
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| • |
 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] |
> 1907 |
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The Police Commission in Berlin establishes pre-release censorship of films. |
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| • |
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. |
> 1963 |
| • |
Dictograph electro-mechanical loudspeaker introduced in New York by Hutchinson Acoustic Company. |
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| • |
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. |
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| • |
First Brazilian drama film, Os Estranguladores, directed by Antonio Leal and Isaac Sandenberg, is based on material from police records. |
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| • |
British Sunday newspaper The Observer bought by Lord Northcliffe, founder of the Daily Mail. |
< 1900 |
