Episode #702
QUICKIE HISTIE 2 -- Edison versus the Lumières
Before Hollywood, before the Oscars, before movies even knew what they were going to become, there was a race. On this episode of A Take on the Academy's Quickie History, we pick up where our first history episode left off: moving pictures exist. Now somebody has to figure out what to do with them. In America, Thomas Edison and the criminally under-celebrated W.K.L. Dickson build the Kinetoscope, the Black Maria, and an entire business around charging people a nickel to watch photographs refuse to sit still. Across the Atlantic, Auguste and Louis Lumière have a different idea. What if movies weren't something you watched alone through a peephole? What if we watched them... together? It's Edison versus the Lumières. Business versus art. Patents versus possibility. The Inventor of the Light Bulb racing the Brothers of Light. Along the way we'll visit the world's first movie studio, a Paris basement where moviegoing was born, the train that terrified (or probably didn't terrify) an audience, and Thomas Edison's attempt to control a rapidly growing industry. And somehow, all those patents, lawyers, and lawsuits will send filmmakers running toward a dusty little community in Southern California. You may have heard of it. Hollywood.
