Message-Id: <199901132249.PAA26718@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 17:50:57 -0400 From: Tamara Swora <mailto:tswo@LOC.GOV> Subject: Library of Congress National Digital Library Program announces To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ New Collection from the Library of Congress National Digital Library Program: Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies**Available at http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edhome.html
Perhaps the most famous American inventor, Thomas A. Edison has had an extraordinary impact on modern life through his inventions, which have included the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the Kinetograph (a motion picture camera), and the Kinetoscope (a motion picture viewer). In his lifetime, he received 1,093 patents, and became a prominent manufacturer and businessman by marketing his inventions. The collections in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division of the Library of Congress contain a wide range of the surviving products of Edison's entertainment inventions and industries. The Library's National Digital Library Program is making a large sampling of these items available on its World Wide Web site
in a presentation entitled "Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies." In its first release available January 13, 1999, the site features 341 Edison motion pictures, 81 disc sound recordings, and several photographs, advertisements, and magazine articles. Cylinder sound recordings will be added to the site in the near future. Brief histories are given of Edison's involvement with motion pictures and sound recordings, and there is also a special page focusing on the life of this famous inventor.
The disc recordings offered on the website reflect the variety of material produced by the Edison Company. Selections include instrumental, popular vocal, spoken word, spoken comedy, foreign language, religious, opera, and concert recordings.
Motion pictures from the earliest experimental films made in 1891 to films made in 1918, the year the company ceased production, are featured on the site. The company's earliest films were actualities showing famous people, news events, disasters, people at work, new modes of travel and technology, scenic views, expositions, and other leisure events. As actualities declined in popularity, production shifted to comedies and dramas. A representation of all of these genres is available on the website, including topics such as the Galveston Cyclone of 1900, the Paris Exposition of 1900, the Boer War, railroads, the Alaska Gold Rush (1897), and scenic views from around the United States at the turn of the century. Famous figures such as Annie Oakley, President McKinley, and the Duke of York appear in these films. Notable early dramas such as The Great Train Robbery (1903) and Jack and the Beanstalk (1902) are also featured, as well as an early exercise in puppet animation entitled R.F.D. 10,000 B.C. (1917).
Edison himself is featured on his own inventions in a motion picture entitled A Day with Thomas A. Edison (1922) and in a disc sound recording entitled Let Us Not Forget (1919) where he speaks on America's allies in World War I.
For more information or questions about this collection or about the National Digital Library Program, please contact mailto:ndlpcoll@loc.gov