Allen Ramsey

An excerpt of the Shakespeare play presented in the Kinetophone sound system, in which the sound was provided by synchronized Edison cylinders.

The Birth of the Telephone (1914) is a Kinetophone short produced by Edison, featuring Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, discussing his role in the development of the telephone. Recorded at Edison’s Bronx studio, the film is presumed lost, but the synchronized sound cylinder survives and is accessible.

A political boss antagonizes his constituents when he delivers an oratory while being fed talking points from his daughter who is reading from the wrong newspaper.

Nursery Favourites (1913) is an Edison Kinetophone short featuring performers miming to a pre-recorded nursery song, synchronized with a commercial phonograph record. It stands as an early example of Edison’s experiments with sound-film technology.

Civil War drama of a Confederate spy who is captured by Union soldiers.

The Edison Quartet perform songs as blacksmiths. This was one of 200 projects produced using the Edison Kinetophone system. The Kinetophone was a fairly complex mechanical means of creating talking pictures. Unlike previous systems, in which actors would be required to lip sync to preexisting recordings on camera, the Kinetophone was one of the earliest film technologies to record sound at the same time as the image.

A short Edison Kinetophone film, distributed by General Film Company, representative of Edison’s early sound-film experiments. Details on plot, cast, and runtime are not fully documented in surviving sources.

A group of actors in various costumes including powdered-wigged 18th century interlocutor, and black-faced comedian side men, engage in some jokes and sing several songs.

A comic sketch that features two players who think each one is deaf, causing them to shout. Part of the Edison Kinetophone Collection. The Kinetophone was a fairly complex mechanical means of creating talking pictures. Unlike previous systems, in which actors would be required to lip sync to preexisting recordings on camera, the Kinetophone was one of the earliest film technologies to record sound at the same time as the image.

On February 17, 1913, after many years of R+D, Thomas Alva Edison introduced the Edison Kinetophone to an enthusiastic New York audience. The Kinetophone was a fairly complex mechanical means of creating talking pictures. Unlike previous systems, in which actors would be required to lip sync to preexisting recordings on camera, the Kinetophone was one of the earliest film technologies to record sound at the same time as the image. More than 200 of these Kinetophones were produced between 1913 and 1914, but only a handful of the films and their accompanying sound cylinders survive.

A veteran of the Napoleanic Wars recounts his memories and grants his blessings upon the marriage of his granddaughter and a young soldier.

A short Edison Kinetophone film, part of Edison’s early experiments in synchronizing sound and image. Distributed by General Film Company. (Plot, cast, and running time are not fully documented in surviving sources.)

A comedy of a young man’s humiliating initiation into a woman-hating men’s club, The Five Jolly Bachelors. With Eddie Boulden and the Edison Quartet.

An Edison Kinetophone short presenting an on-stage minstrel company performing musical numbers and patter; made as part of Edison’s early synchronized sound demonstrations.