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N0KFQ > TODAY 19.06.16 17:10l 55 Lines 2533 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
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Subj: Today in History - Jun 19
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1905
First nickelodeon opens
On this day in 1905, some 450 people attend the opening day of
the world's first nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, and developed by the showman Harry Davis. The
storefront theater boasted 96 seats and charged each patron five
cents. Nickelodeons (named for a combination of the admission
cost and the Greek word for "theater") soon spread across the
country. Their usual offerings included live vaudeville acts as
well as short films. By 1907, some 2 million Americans had
visited a nickelodeon, and the storefront theaters remained the
main outlet for films until they were replaced around 1910 by
large modern theaters.
Inventors in Europe and the United States, including Thomas
Edison, had been developing movie cameras since the late 1880s.
Early films could only be viewed as peep shows, but by the late
1890s movies could be projected onto a screen. Audiences were
beginning to attend public demonstrations, and several movie
"factories" (as the earliest production studios were called) were
formed. In 1896, the Edison Company inaugurated the era of
commercial movies, showing a collection of moving images as a
minor act in a vaudeville show that also included live
performers, among whom were a Russian clown, an "eccentric
dancer" and a "gymnastic comedian." The film, shown at Koster and
Bial's Music Hall in New York City, featured images of dancers,
ocean waves and gondolas.
Short films, usually less than a minute long, became a regular
part of vaudeville shows at the turn of the century as "chasers"
to clear out the audience after a show. A vaudeville performers'
strike in 1901, however, left theaters scrambling for acts, and
movies became the main event. In the earliest years, vaudeville
theater owners had to purchase films from factories via mail
order, rather than renting them, which made it expensive to
change shows frequently. Starting in 1902, Henry Miles of San
Francisco began renting films to theaters, forming the basis of
today's distribution system. The first theater devoted solely to
films, The Electric Theater in Los Angeles, opened in 1902.
Housed in a tent, the theater's first screening included a short
called New York in a Blizzard. Admission cost about 10 cents for
a one-hour show. Nickelodeons developed soon after, offering both
movies and live acts.
73 - K.O., n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
Winlink: n0kfq@winlink.org
E-Mail : kohiggs@gmail.com
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