Table of Contents

Prologue: Introducing Mr. Dickson 1. Family matters 2. Goerck Street 3. The Business of Invention; Electricity, Ore, and the PHonograph 4. Personal Matters 5. From a Ladies' Watch to a Locomotive: the New Laboratory 6. The Germ of an Idea 7. The Kineto-Phonograph: The Begninning of a Quest 8. Trials, Errors, Mergers, Shenanigans, and Speculation 9. Competition! 10. A Certain Precipitate of Knowledge: The Kinetograph, Spring 1889 11. Mr. Edison Triumphs in Europe and Dickson has a Busy Summer 12. "Good Morning, Mr. Edison": The Strip Kintograph 13. Caveat, Film, an announcement and a Conundrom: The Kineto after Paris 14. "We Had a Hell of a Good Time...": Ore Milling and Electricity, Dreams and Reality 15. the Nickel-in-the-Slot Phonograph 16. "Come Up Stairs and See the Germ Work": Problems, Success, and REvisions 17. Edison's Agent 18. "A Method of Taking and Using Photographs": Patenting the Kinetoscope and Kinetograph 19. "Unaltered to Date": Creating the Foundation fo the Modern Motion Picture 20. The Kinetoscope and Black Maria 21. Personal Affairs: Pictures, Words, Inventions 22. Wizard Edison's Wonderful Instrument: The Kinetoscope 23. A Discontented Winter 24. Between Careers: Publishing and New Opportunities 25. The Age of Movement: a New Enterprise 26. The Playful Specter of teh Night: The Biograph on Screen 27. Home Again 28. The Pope and the Mutoscopes 29. News in a Pictorial Way 30. The Road to Ladysmith 31. To Pretoria and Beyond: The Heart of the Biographer at Rest 32. The Hope to See a Bright Future: The W.K.L. Dickson Laboratory 33. A Peculiar Memory for Details 34. Forgotten by History: Evaluating Mr. Dickson

Promotional Information

Details Dickson's influential career and the early history of the film industry

About the Author

Paul Spehr is former Assistant Chief of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division at the Library of Congress, Washington D.C.

Reviews

"... recounts the contributions of Thomas Edison's assistant in charge of experimentation whose work led to the development of the first commercially successful moving image machines... a valuable and comprehensive history." -Bruce A. Austin, COMMUNICATION BOOKNOTES QTLY, Vol. 40.3 July-Sept. 2009