1
COPYCATS: Anschütz Chronophotographs as Direct Source Material for Early
Edison Kinetoscope Films
by Deac Rossell
[Pre-print copy, later published in Film History, Vol 28, No 2 (2016), pp. 142 - 172]
Abstract:
This article uses new research to describe the direct influence of the entertainment
disks made by Ottomar Anschütz for public use in his Schnellseher moving picture
device on the kinetoscope at Thomas Edison’s West Orange laboratory, including
Edison’s creation of a direct copy of an 1890 Anschütz production in The Barber Shop
(1893), and an imitation of another Anschütz production in Fred Ott’s Sneeze (1891). In
making these connections between the first two moving-picture systems, the article also
provides new research giving a brief glimpse of the exhibition of the Schnellseher in
America from 1889 to 1893, and places the material in new lines of enquiry about the
international character of the invention of moving pictures, about the sources of early
filmed subjects, and about the contributions of previously overlooked figures in setting
out to commercialise moving pictures.
Over the past 25 years, a new generation of early cinema historians have had a
profound impact on our understanding of how films were made and worked before
c.1907, of how some elements of the emerging film industry evolved, and of how
individual figures contributed to the nascent art of the cinema. To mention but a few key
examples, Martin Loiperdinger’s work on the chocolate magnate Ludwig Stollwerck,
Camille Blot-Wellens’s study of the Cinematographe Joly-Normandin, Paul Spehr’s
extensive biography of W. K. L. Dickson, and Marta Braun’s now-classic study of
chronophotographer Étienne-Jules Marey1 have all brought important new material
under examination and suggested connections to previously unknown or unexplored
facets of early moving picture work. But as John Staudenmaier noted about historians
of technology, “scholars sin more by the questions they do not discuss than by
irresponsibility in their treatment of the questions under consideration.”2 So in the field
of early cinema research there are still many longeurs, many missing parts of the story.
Some of these loopholes have been caused by the passage of time and the
consequent lack of preserved documentation and artifacts; others have their origin in
the habits of too-often still nationally based historians; and still others are seemingly
inexplicable. There is not yet a proper discussion of the early makers and suppliers of
celluloid, or of figures central to the earliest pioneering work in moving pictures who
were particularly short-lived, such as George William de Bedts in France, Hermann O.
Foersterling in Germany, or Thomas Henry Blair in America (later, in England). Even
major figures suffer odd fates, with the Lumière brothers a particularly evocative
2
example: there is virtually no discussion of parallel late-19th century photographic firms
who took up the new field of cinematography and helped establish it as something more
durable than a novelty, for example Adolph Hesekiel in Berlin, Dr. J. H. Smith in Zürich,
Wrench and Son in London, or John Carbutt in Philadelphia; there is little analysis of
why the Lumière firm did not continue in the business they pioneered; and, equally,
there is no comparative study of why the Lumière firm was so successful with the new
medium, and other pioneers were not. For historians of early cinema, this is really the
point of Staudenmeier’s complaint: by working tirelessly within an inherited master
narrative of the invention and early history of the cinema, one that relies on a preexistent, poorly researched sketch from the early historians of the 1920s, an outline that
limits and defines a narrow locus of interest, the written history of cinema’s early years
becomes a linear, superficial history of successes lacking context. The ‘Why’ of
success is never explained, it is just assumed to be a natural and inevitable outcome of
artifacts associated with figures we already know. Apart from, and beyond, the implicit
technological bias and the historical determinism of this inherited master narrative, it is
not so much a question of any missing biographical or corporate history that is at stake
here, but rather that there is too little recognition of the patterns of entrepreneurship
through which outsiders like Robert Paul, an electrical engineer, and Oskar Messter, an
optician, and Siegmund Lubin, another optician, and Charles Pathé, a fairgrounds
phonograph showman, found their more lasting success in the new medium in
comparison not only with their similarly-equipped contemporaries, but also with both
pioneers and established companies which logically and rationally could have – or
should have – overwhelmed them, but did not. This lack of critical perspective and
historical texture in early cinema studies, a lack arising from insufficient study of a wider
context against which a known figure or company can be measured, is the early cinema
historians’ way of writing “company history”, the history of a narrative which is not only
dependent on the self-validation of a successful artifact, but a history which is also too
neatly abstracted from the period’s detail and turbulence to present an adequate picture
of the events in which the artifact is involved.
The predominant characteristic of early cinema’s master narrative has always been
technological. And the debate started immediately: in the issue of September 26, 1896,
the German showman’s magazine Der Komet carried an article by Theodore Bläser
with the headline “Edison or Lumière?” that asked whether Edison’s peep-show
kinetoscope was the beginning of the cinema, or whether it was Lumière’s projection
device.3 A century later, this debate continued with the President of the Cinémathèque
française, film director Bertrand Tavernier, at a Cannes Film Festival press conference
outlining the forthcoming French celebrations of the centennial of the cinema
contending adamantly that “Edison with his peep-show kinetoscope is the precursor of
television. Pick any date you like for the centennial of television and you can celebrate
the work of Thomas Alva Edison. The true inventors of the cinema are Auguste and
Louis Lumière and the birth of the cinema was on December 28, 1895.”4 Tavernier’s
statement produced pandemonium amongst the gathered press corps, which continued
well after the conference broke up, led not least by an outraged and historically wellinformed reporter for The New York Times. With technology defining the master
3
narrative of cinema’s invention, it is no surprise, then, that outlying technologies, or
those seemingly “unsuccessful” in producing the key technological components that
came to be used throughout most of the 20th century, have been regularly marginalised
and relegated to the awkward dead end alleyways of history. Perhaps the best known
example among these odd byways that came to no technical fruition are the brothers
Skladanowsky, who produced a double-film-band projector using images painstakingly
cut one by one, alternatively, into each band to achieve a continuous image on the
screen, in a kind of fast-paced dissolving-view biunial.5 An even earlier example would
be the Schnellseher of chronophotographer Ottomar Anschütz, a rotating disk where
precisely timed flashes of light intermittently illuminated his sequential images, seen by
groups of three or four people at a time on a milk-glass screen five inches wide. This
device was technologically a dead end, superceded by the long celluloid bands
developed for the kinetoscope. But was the work of Anschütz really such an outlier, and
should his many public presentations of moving pictures on the Schnellseher be
brought in from the cold and regarded as one of the mainstream developments of the
cinema pioneers? After all it was the Anschütz entertainment images for the
Schnellseher that were copied by Edison and his kinetoscope team as they began to
make their first moving pictures at the laboratory in West Orange.
Figure 1: Ottom ar Anschütz in a fam ily portrait
about 1903. Probably taken on a visit to the fam ily
property in Lissa. (Courtesy Holger Anschütz)
By 1889 the Schnellseher viewing device
developed by the photographer Ottomar
Anschütz for his series photographs had
been publicly known for two years. [Fig. 1] It
had been demonstrated in Berlin for Culture
Minister von Goslar, a selection of eminent
scientists, and leading figures in the
photographic world in March, 1887; from
mid-June to mid-September it was exhibited
to the general public in a railway arch next to
the Berlin Exhibition Park in Berlin for an
admission fee, which attracted some 15,000
viewers between 18 July and 25 August;6
and in Autumn of the same year it began a
tour of photographic societies, art galleries,
and scientific congresses that included stops
in Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, Wiesbaden,
and other cities. In the following year, 1888,
the Schnellseher was seen outside of
Germany for the first time at selected
photographic congresses and other
exhibition venues in Europe, and one
example was sent to New York City on a
commercial trial.7 (In America, the
Schnellseher was most often called the
Tachyscope, or sometimes the Electrical
4
Tachyscope, and in 1893 it was marketed
briefly as The Electrical Wonder, but here
it will always be referred to as the
Schnellseher, Anschütz’s original,
invented name of “Quick-Viewer”, or
“Speed-Viewer”.) [Fig. 2]
In late 1889 and early 1890, Anschütz
began to work on new ideas about how to
commercialise his moving-picture system.
These months were a very busy and
productive period for the evolution of the
Schnellseher as a machine now intended
to entertain a paying public. A new model
of the original free-standing device that
was more easily transportable than the
original was demonstrated in mid-January
Figure 2: The only known illustration of the original
1890,8 and a radically different model in
m odel Schnellseher, intended for viewing by sm all
groups. Scientific American 16, Novem ber 1889.
the shape of a long horizontal cylinder with
six viewing ports was designed, built, and
then demonstrated by April of the same year.9 [Fig. 3] Both of these new models were
attempts to create an economically efficient Schnellseher that would maximise income
from public exhibition while reducing the device’s
running costs. [Figure 3] By the end of 1890, Anschütz
had concluded negotiations with the major electrical
firm of Siemens & Halske for the mass manufacture of
his latest model of the Schnellseher, in the form of a
coin-operated automat driven by an electrical motor
that could be mounted on a wall or placed on a stand
so that its viewing aperture was brought to eye level.
Manufacture of the automat Schnellseher that would
ultimately extend to some 152 examples commenced
in early 1891 in an intense process that saw Anschütz
writing to the Siemens factory in Charlottenburg,
Berlin, on a daily basis – and frequently twice daily – in
the first half of the year, with the new model exhibited
publicly for the first time at an electrical exhibition in
Frankfurt a. M. in August.10 In 1892, this automat
Schnellseher was installed at the Breslau Zoological
Garden, the Berlin Zoo, and the main Berlin post
office. Four machines were in use at the Hohenzollern Figure 3: Drum -form Schnellseher with
six viewing ports (one not shown). This
Gallery in Berlin, and two were shipped to Paris. In
was a stepping-stone towards the full
June, another Schnellseher was installed at the
com m ercialization of Anschütz’s
Crystal Palace in London, with Siemens & Halske’s
m oving picture system .
5
local agent complaining that electric supply to the imposing South London building
would be ending in a few weeks, so there was only a short time available for its
display.11
As Anschütz turned his attention to commercializing his apparatus for exhibiting
photographic moving pictures, he also began to make photographic series that had
nothing to do with the traditional chronophotographic subjects of animal and human
locomotion, of athletes and gymnasts, of the flight of birds, or the gaits of horses.
Instead, Anschütz began to work on narrative entertainment series that would record
comical or amusing aspects of daily life, sometimes even reaching epic storytelling
proportions for moving-picture work that would be seen by the viewers of a
Schnellseher for only a few seconds.12 Because Anschütz took himself very seriously as
an artistic photographer, and tightly controlled the use of his images, being always
aware of his public social status and his work as photographic instructor to the Kaiser’s
wife and children, almost no images of the purely entertainment series he produced for
use in the Schnellseher are known to survive, and printed descriptions of them in the
photographic literature, the main source of information about his work, are rare.13 With
these short moving-picture sequences, however, some titles, often the only surviving
record of a series, are themselves reasonably evocative: Kinder Bonbon essend
(Children Eating Bonbons), Zwei Zimmerleute früstückend (Two Carpenters
Breakfasting), Tabakschnupfender Alter (Old Man Taking Snuff), Familie essend aus
einem Topfe (Family Eating from a Single Bowl), Mann mit wechselnden Minenspiel
(Man with Changing Expressions), Tänzerin (Woman Dancing).14
The title of one of the entertainment series made during this energetic burst of
amusement production in early 1890 could be translated as The Barber Shop. Which
leads to immediate thoughts of the well-known Edison kinetoscope film of the same
title, made in late 1893 by W. K. L. Dickson and William Heise15 and publicly exhibited
from the opening day of the first kinetoscope parlor by the Holland Brothers at 1155
Broadway, New York City, on 14 April 1894.16 A more literal translation of this Anschütz
subject would be Lathering Up at the Barber’s, as the series was called in
correspondence Einseifen beim Barbier. This literal title nonetheless asks the same
question of the later film made in Edison’s Black Maria studio in New Jersey. The
question of whether Anschütz’s short comic drama of early 1890 is the direct source
material for the 1893 kinetoscope subject The Barber Shop is raised here for the first
time, and my conclusion is that the film made in Edison’s laboratory in late 1893 was
not just inspired by the Anschütz work, but was essentially a direct copy of the earlier
Anschütz film.
Here is the most complete surviving description of the Anschütz barbershop disk:
“Among the projected Anschütz series photographs, Einseifen beim Barbier is of
perfectly overpowering comical effect. A man sits leaning back in the barber’s chair, in
front of him stands the barber serving his profession armed with soap and brush. At the
side an assistant sharpens a straight razor on its strop. The slow back-and-forth travel
6
of the razor on the strop, the body movements of the lathering barber, and the
drumming fingers of the customer are all superbly true to nature.”17
With the addition of an extra character and some on-screen business that indicates
Edison’s conscious search to surpass the limitations of 24-phase chronophotography, a
description of the surviving kinetoscope film The Barber Shop is remarkably similar: a
man sits leaning back in the barber’s chair, behind him stands the barber shaving his
already-lathered customer. At one side another customer waits, reading the newspaper;
a third customer enters from the opposite side and is shown a story in the paper as the
two both wait their turn in the chair. The description of Einseifen beim Barbier seems to
fit the later Edison film of 1893, but the Edison film picks up the action after the
customer is already lathered. Or does it?
There are also two contemporary descriptions of
The Barber Shop. The surviving copy of The
Barber Shop at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York is as described above. But a visitor to
Edison’s laboratory in March 1894 just weeks
before The Barber Shop opened publicly in New
York City found the subject mounted in a
kinetoscope at the West Orange facility,18 and his
published description in The New York Herald
states: “Looking into it [the kinetoscope] one
sees the barber and three men waiting to be
shaved. One of the men rises and walks across
the picture to the chair, sits down and the barber
goes through all the customary operations of
shaving a man. Every motion of the barber from
the stropping of the razor to the brushing of the
man’s hair, is reproduced....”19 Here, the
stropping of the razor is mentioned in the Edison
subject, and the lathering up as well. In addition,
The Northern Queensland Herald, which
described the Edison film in 1895, also provides
a reading that expands on the surviving material:
“A man is reclining upon a barber’s chair about to
be shaved. The barber goes to his case, secures
his cup, makes a lather with which he proceeds
Figure 4: Fifty-five fram es from The Barber
to lather the man’s face. Meanwhile.....”20 [Fig. 4] Shop in the Century Magazine, June, 1894.
Here again the process of lathering up the
In the left-hand colum n, the the barber is
customer is described. If the key central action of clearly working with brush and cup to
produce his lather; in the right-hand colum n,
the film is with the barber and his professional
he begins to lather his custom er.
duties, then in these descriptions, proceeding
(Reproduced, The Pueblo Press, 1939)
from sharpening the razor to lathering the
customer and then shaving him, to cutting and brushing his hair, the Edison film has
7
clearly demonstrated the duration of action and movement that Edison and his staff
desired to capture and therefore surpass the limits of chronophotography. The film
under discussion here first reproduces, and then surpasses, the actions of Anschütz’s
original film of a barber at work.21
Paul Spehr, in his meticulous study of W. K. L. Dickson and the work that generated the
kinetoscope at Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, repeatedly
notes that Edison and the employees working on the development of the kinetoscope
were seeking duration in their moving picture work: in Dickson’s words, “From...the very
earliest day, Mr. Edison’s idea was to reproduce long entertainments, such as operas,
to build such an apparatus that would be capable of taking necessarily an enormous
number of pictures.” The laboratory was well aware of the sequenced work of the
chronophotographers, and Edison had met directly with Muybridge and Marey. A strong
motivation of the team at West Orange was to surpass the limitations of the
chronophotographic format that produced series of up to 24 images. Dickson, wrote
Spehr, “throughout his life referred to single frames of a film as a ‘phase’”,22 adopting
the term used by chronophotographers to denote a single image in a photographed
series. Spehr concludes that “Although the goal
of 28 minutes of running time or opera with
‘people long since dead’ proved elusive, Edison
and Dickson stuck with their objective to record
a quantity of images successively in a
continuous line” and therefore surpass the
records of motion made by Muybridge, Marey,
and Anschütz.23 [Fig. 5] For Edison and his
kinetoscope workers to undertake, therefore, as
an early subject a film that was a direct copy of
a known and publicly used Schnellseher
subject, and to try to show off their new
photographic machinery by increasing the
known subject’s length and duration in
comparison, is not in the least surprising.24
Figure 5: The Edison Kinetoscope, showing
the long loop of celluloid im ages that
surpassed the 24 phases of m ovem ent
recorded by Anschütz and the other
chronophotographers while producing the
sustained m ovem ent sought by Edison. (La
Nature [Paris}, 1894)
A quite separate argument for Einseifen beim
Barbier as the source material for the
kinetoscope film The Barber Shop comes from
explicit internal evidence in the kinetoscope film
itself. To the right of Edison’s barber shaving
his customer, is a prominent sign reading: “The
Latest Wonder. Shave and Hair Cut for a
Nickel”. This is a direct reference to the
Anschütz moving picture device, the
Schnellseher, and to the Anschütz
entertainment disk, which is being copied and
extended by the Edison team in New Jersey.
8
[Fig. 6] Not only was the automat Schnellseher promoted in America under the name of
Figure 6: A fram e from The Barber Shop (Musser No. 18) as currently preserved. (Courtesy Museum of
Modern Art, New York)
“The Electrical Wonder”, the label it was given at the World’s Fair in Chicago from early
summer 1893, but also the Schnellseher in the USA was equipped with a coinoperating mechanism designed for American nickels.25 At the time, the price of a haircut
was 25 cents, the legendary “two bits” of musical call and response fame.26 It is clear
that this placard in The Barber Shop, which is otherwise an odd reference and has no
purpose, is a humorous insider reference to Anschütz’s entertainment disk, an ironical
statement by either Dickson or Heise as their production of The Barber Shop directly
copied and extended the original work of Ottomar Anschütz. It is certainly evidence of
their knowledge of the Anschütz subject, knowledge in their possession before filming
at the Edison laboratory began. The Barber Shop is one of only two films in the first 75
Edison productions through October, 1894 (Musser Nos. 1 - 75), that has any text,
wording, or placard included in the frame, the only other example being a small poster
in the decor of Bar Room Scene No. 1 (Musser No. 37, produced by May, 1894). In this
film, on the left side of the frame, the bar is decorated with an illustrated poster for a
particular brand of beer hung above a keg. This looks like a natural accompaniment to
the setting, in contrast to the very large and unrelated sign in The Barber Shop, which
seems out of place in this particular workplace.
Did Thomas Alva Edison, or W. K. L. Dickson, or William Heise,27 the three men most
9
responsible for kinetoscope development and for The Barber Shop in particular, have
the opportunity to see the Anschütz Einseifen beim Barbier before their own version of
the film was made in late 1893? Yes, each of them in fact had multiple opportunities to
see the Anschütz disk. It has been known for half a century that all three were aware of
the operating principles of Anschütz’s Schnellseher, an apparatus which itself formed a
very brief moment in the technological development of the kinetoscope when it was
copied at the laboratory as a possible way forward and then quickly abandoned.28 But
the history of the Schnellseher in America, and its widespread exhibition there,
particularly in New York City and Chicago, has been a missing chapter in early cinema
history. An original model Schnellseher was shipped to New York City as early as 1889,
where it was exhibited at the premises of C. B. Richards and Company, as well as in
Philadelphia and in Boston. This Schnellseher turns up again in 1890 at a successor
firm to C. B. Richards, the United States Photographic Supply Company, who held a
press preview of the Electrical Tachyscope, one of the device’s several names, on 15
March 1890 at the company’s office in New York City. [Fig. 7] Several moving pictures
were demonstrated for the press, including one of
Anschütz’s signature chronophotographs of a horse and
rider jumping a hurdle, as well as representations “of men
leaping, athletic sports, and the various positions of birds
and animals, such as jumping dogs and climbing
monkeys.”29 The company then also promised that the
device “will be exhibited to those interested in it at 3 East
Fourteenth Street” in the succeeding weeks.30 But if he
saw it on 14th Street, this New York City appearance of the
Schnellseher was not Thomas Edison’s first look at the
machine, for while he was on his trip to Paris for the
Exposition Universelle held there in 1889, Edison already
had taken the opportunity to see the Anschütz
Schnellseher as he toured the pavilions with Étienne-Jules
Marey.31 He also had the further opportunity to see a
Schnellseher after leaving Paris when he travelled to Berlin
for a few days as the guest of Werner von Siemens.32
Figure 7: Arthur Schwartz in
1892. At the United States
Photographic Supply Com pany
in NY he exhibited the
Schnellseher in 1890, and was
later head of the Electrical
W onder Com pany in London.
From The Practical
Photographer (London), 1
January 1892. (Courtesy Richard
Brown)
Perhaps more pertinent to the copying of Anschütz’s
entertainment disks than these very early demonstrations,
when the automat Schnellseher manufactured by the firm
of Siemens & Halske became available, 26 machines were
shipped to New York City in August, 1892, along with the
usual two picture-disks per machine, or 52 disks. They
were quickly put into operation in the city and elsewhere on
the east coast. Eighteen Schnellsehers were exhibiting in
public spaces in New York by October 1892, including five Schnellsehers at the Eden
Musee from 1 September 1892, located at 55 West 23rd Street, and one Schnellseher
at Koster & Bial’s Music Hall, at 34th Street and Broadway from 10 October 1892. [Fig.
8] The remaining machines were exhibited elsewhere in New York City and in Boston.33
10
So the Schnellseher was widely operating in well-known entertainment venues and
public spaces at least a full year before The Barber Shop went into production at
Edison’s laboratory.
The Eden Musee showings have long
been recorded in film histories,
although much ignored. Terry
Ramsaye wrote in A Million and One
Nights that “With the coming of the
kinetoscopic type of peep show in
1894-5 [sic.], the Eden Musee began
showing pictures and showed them
continuously thereafter....[the Eden
Musee] ..did not install the Edison
peep show kinetoscope, but chose a
similar type of device, manufactured
by the famous electrical concern of
Siemens & Halske, in Germany. This
machine ran until the world’s supply
of films was exhausted.”34 Ramsaye’s
text here is very likely based on an
equally mis-timed account in
Frederick A. Talbot’s Moving
Figure 8: Autom at m odel Schnellseher m anufactured by
Pictures. How They are Made and
Siem ens and Halske in Berlin, 1891-1892. This was the
Worked (London, 1912: William
m odel installed at the Eden Musee and at Koster & Bial’s
Heinemann), where Talbot mentions
Music Hall in 1892. (Courtesy Deutsches Museum ,
Munich)
the Schnellseher at the Eden Musee,
again erring on the dates: “Mr.
Hollaman saw the Kinetoscope at the Chicago World’s Fair [sic.] in the summer of
1893,35 but as it was crude and did not arouse great enthusiasm, he took no especial
interest in it. In the following year, however, [i.e., 1894] he acquired an improved
Kinetoscope [sic.] from Berlin, which had been made by the celebrated electrical
engineering firm, Siemens and Halske....Two of the machines were installed in the
Eden Musée and remained there for six months. At the end of that time they were
abandoned for the reason that no new films could be obtained.”.36 Perhaps it is the
mistaken late dates of the exhibition of the Schnellseher in these two pioneering and
long-in-print English-language histories by Ramsaye and Talbot that has lulled modern
historians into thinking the Anschütz apparatus only followed the kinetoscope into the
American marketplace, rather than being introduced to the paying public in New York
City some two years earlier than the Edison kinetoscope.
The first New York exhibitions of the Schnellseher were under the auspices an
entrepreneur named Joe Livingstone, who had acquired North American rights to the
Schnellseher but who quickly sold them off to a former partner or employee named
11
Arthur Schwarz, a German immigrant active in photographic circles in the US and
Canada, who then moved briefly to
London and became head of the newlyformed Electrical Wonder Company
(EWC), which promptly established a
public Schnellseher parlour in London at
425 Strand from 19 December 1892, and
then a second London parlour on
Brompton Road from March, 1893.37 That
same Spring, the Electrical Wonder
Company announced they had acquired a
concession from the World’s Columbian
Exposition in Chicago for the exhibition of
up to 50 Schnellsehers.38 [Fig. 9] When
the EWC Schnellsehers reached the fair
Figure 9: Notice of the Electrical W onder Com pany
(London) shares issue for the W orld’s Colum bian
Exposition in Chicago, 1893. (Courtesy Siem ens
Archive, Munich)
Figure 10: Cover of the Electrical W onder
Com pany brochure presenting the Schnellseher at
the Colum bian Exposition in Chicago.
(Ciném athèque française, Paris, courtesy Laurent
Mannoni)
in Chicago, they were installed in the
German Department on the main floor of the
Electricity Building, as well as in the Midway
Plaisance under the viaducts of Stony Park
Avenue, Woodlawn Avenue, and Madison
Avenue, and were advertised under the
name “The Electrical Wonder.” With Thomas
Edison visiting the fair in late Summer, this
was another prime opportunity for him to see
or revisit the Anschütz device and register its
short moving pictures: the main floor of the
Electricity Building, at the least, would be a
12
focal point for his visit to the fair, whatever his curiosity about electrical moving picture
apparatus in other locations at the fair.39 [Fig. 10] Although there is today little remaining
evidence of just what disks were used in Chicago, the Electrical Wonder Company had
by then collected worldwide rights to the Schnellseher and it is clear from their overall
activity that they had access to the entire repertoire of Anschütz disks, including all of
the entertainment subjects, and that they were aggressively abandoning “dull” subjects
like athletes and marching soldiers in favor of dancing women and other lively subjects.
Thomas Armat, in a brief memoir written in 1935 recalled seeing his first moving
pictures on the Anschütz Electrical Wonder at the Chicago fair: “The picture I saw was
that of an elephant trotting along in a most realistic manner. It was an outdoor scene, a
foreign setting. The idea of bringing scenes from far and interesting countries and
projecting them upon a screen before comfortably seated spectators was an exciting
thought.” 40
Was The Barber Shop the only film that Edison’s men copied from the Anschütz
repertoire of entertainment subjects? Probably not. But it is difficult to relate the
Anschütz series of Boxers, which is known to have been shown in the US from 1890,
before the automat Schnellseher appeared, and which was called in a later EWC
advertising brochure for their Chicago exhibitions Prize Fighters in the Ring, to any of
the experimental boxing subjects at the Edison laboratory (Musser Nos. 10, 12, 25),
partly because the set-up (two men, one boxing ring, one wall) is so plain and
undistinguished that no direct links are likely to be established, and partly because
prizefighting was such a popular and mainstream topic for entertainment at the time
that it was an obvious choice of subject for both the Schnellseher and the kinetoscope.
This would also be a subject that could clearly show the advantages of Edison’s soughtafter duration, ten or fifteen seconds of unrepeated boxing action extended beyond the
repeating few seconds that a viewer would experience in the Anschütz device. Similar
issues regarding precedent and copy would be true of any suggestion of a direct
relationship between the Anschütz subject Ringer (Wrestlers) and the kinetoscope film
called Wrestling (Musser No. 14)41, or the Anschütz film Fechtende Soldaten (Soldiers
Fencing), made before April, 1890, and the Edison subject Fencing (or Fencers,
Musser No. 13), made by October 1892. The same lack of clear evidence and imagery
inhibits discussion of several films of female dancers made by Anschütz before the end
of 1890 and by Edison in Spring, 1894.42
But at the same time it can nonetheless be said that from 20 May 1891 (Dickson
Greeting!, Musser No. 4) through mid-March 1894 (Boxing Match, Musser No. 25),
there are 22 successful recorded films made at West Orange. Of these 22 filmed
subjects, 15 films (or 68%) repeat subjects used by Anschütz in the Schnellseher. Even
allowing for some typical chronophotographic subjects that relate to physiological
movement and physical exercise that were recorded by Anschütz as well as by Marey
and Muybridge, this is an unusually high percentage of repeated subjects at the Edison
laboratory. In these early days there were no precedents for what a moving picture
subject could or should be, and no precedents of how photographic visual
13
entertainments should be chosen or organized. Without moving these early Edison
films into a category of direct copying, this high percentage – over two-thirds – of
repeated subjects does seem to indicate that the West Orange researchers had
traditional chronophotographic subjects and Ottomar Anschütz’s publicly shown work
somewhere, somehow, on their minds as they began to make their own moving
pictures. At West Orange, chronophotography was the model and the main inspiration
for the kinetoscope work, the standard against which progress at the laboratory was
measured.
One of the early kinetoscope experiments, however, and perhaps the most famous of
all the early Edison subjects, would seem to be once again a direct copy of its Germanmade predecessor, for who in the world would ever think of photographing a man
sneezing? There really is no precedent for this subject in the world of entertainment or
in still photography, and it is worth further examination here. A very solid case can be
made for considering the film Fred Ott’s Sneeze, Musser No. 19, copyrighted more
didactically as Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7, 1894, as a direct
copy of the prior Anschütz disk Tabakschnupfender Alter (Old Man Taking Snuff), made
in Germany as a Schnellseher entertainment sometime before April, 1890. The 81
frames of Fred Ott’s Sneeze have long been an iconic representation of Edison’s
earliest work on the kinetoscope, and in December 2015 this title was added to the
National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, the essential list of American films
that “deserve to be preserved because of their cultural, historic, or aesthetic
importance.”43
As is well known, the immediate motivation for making Fred Ott’s Sneeze was publicity.
Charles Musser writes that this series of “sequential still photographs [was made] to
illustrate an article appearing in Harper’s Weekly.”44 Because of its intended publication,
it was submitted for copyright and for decades was considered the first copyrighted
moving picture, a story now known to be incorrect.45 The immediate suggestion for this
subject came from the Harper’s writer, Barnet Phillips, who implored Edison to have
someone “perform” a sneeze for the kinetoscope. After ongoing correspondence and
imprecation, Edison ordered Dickson and Heise to record a sneeze that Phillips could
use to illustrate his article as a few strips of film photographed on the Edison camera.
Crucially, in the Harper’s Weekly article, which opens with a long description of the
physiological anatomy of a sneeze, Phillips describes the resulting photographic
sequences as giving “the entire record of a sneeze from the first taking of a pinch of
snuff to the recovery.”46 So it would be possible without doing any damage to this very
early Kinetoscopic experiment to retitle the sequence, Fred Ott Taking Snuff. If the
sequence was retitled as such, it would again right away beg comparison with the
Anschütz disk Old Man Taking Snuff.
Whether the idea for this subject arose in New Jersey from Phillips, Dickson, or even
Edison, or from some conversation between them as Phillips toured the laboratory first
in April and then again in May, 1893, it would seem to be incontrovertible that the
14
Anschütz Tabakschnupfender Alter was familiar to one or more of those four men and
that it made such an indelible impression as a comic turn in only a few seconds that
one or the other of them decided that the imagery needed to be re-shot at the Edison
laboratory for the magazine article. And, indeed, shot in such a way that allowed this
very, very short entertainment to be completely recorded for publication in only 81
frames, which Phillips then didactically analysed in his article for the humour found in
the cycle of a sneeze.47 [Fig. 11] It is my contention here that it was Anschütz’s original
recording of an Old Man Taking Snuff that was the inspiration for the later Edison
publicity project, that
was the reason this
specific subject was
requested, and that it
was the reason that
Phillips undertook to
frame his entire article
around the physiology
of a sneeze. There are
some oblique
references in the
discussions that led up
to the production of
Fred Ott’s Sneeze that
reinforce this idea.
Phillips requested a film
of “some nice looking
young person” be taken
at the laboratory, a
publicity-friendly
mainstream suggestion
Figure 11: Eighty-one fram es from Fred Ott’s Sneeze (Musser No. 19),
originally published in Harper’s W eekly 38, No. 1944, March 2r, 1894, 280. that need not be made
(Courtesy Library of Congress, W ashington, DC)
(and was unusual at the
time — think of the May-Irwin Kiss) unless it was a suggestion that came from the very
present memory of Anschütz’s “old man” taking snuff. Phillips wanted an update of the
earlier work, one that was more compatible with the aspirations and readership of his
magazine. Phillips also stated that the person found would “perform” a sneeze for the
camera, another hint that there was already a “performance” in his mind in bringing up
the subject with Edison and his colleagues.
And again, there is evidence in the film itself which separates it from the general run of
Dickson’s film production at the time, also hinting at something being copied. None of
the surrounding kinetoscope experiments, not even Dickson Greeting (Musser No. 4),
have their action photographed nearly as close in as happens in Fred Ott’s Sneeze.
Dickson’s normal framing at the time is quite distant, with a large amount of space
around his centralized full figures in action. Fred Ott’s Sneeze is a full-frame close-up,
with Ott photographed from mid-chest upwards and with both of his arms very
15
uncharacteristically breaking out of either side of the frame. This is highly untypical
imagery for the laboratory (i.e. Dickson) at this time, and what Spehr calls Dickson’s
“perceptive filming”48 is in fact a unique and unlikely composition not seen elsewhere in
his work. This is, in my view, in fact a direct copy of Anschütz’s framing and setup.
While this highly unusual positioning from Dickson and Heise, which would have
required substantial variation in the position of the awkward Kinetograph camera (and
probably of the subject as well), could be arguably a result of the intended use of the
frames as printed matter rather than as peep-show imagery, it is much more likely that
given the conservative nature of the framing of film production at the laboratory the
justification for this radical, frame-filling imagery is the existence of a precedent, a prior
example, which among other things illustrated the effectiveness of the setup, and a
prior example that had a memorable, indelible comical impact, i.e., the Anschütz title of
1890. If the reasoning here is convincing, and Fred Ott’s Sneeze is indeed another
direct copy of an Anschütz subject, as I contend, then it becomes possible to
reconstruct in one’s mind’s eye the actual imagery of the lost Anschütz work: a
reasonably tight close-up of an old man, likely with a moustache or perhaps also beard,
ingesting a pinch of snuff and instantly reacting to it. Phillips has actually described this
automatic reaction precisely in his text on the cycle of a sneeze, and noted with
especial emphasis the idea that “a sneeze is kindly greeted all over the world...”,
perhaps again an oblique reference to the Anschütz work from the Continent, and its
cross-national impact. What must be remembered here is that the title of the Edison
film is misleading, whether its popular title or its very didactic copyright title. Fred Ott’s
most famous performance is not at all simply a sneeze, but it is a record of the act of
taking a pinch of snuff and its consequences — precisely the subject and title and
process of the Anschütz work.49
Much of what has been said about Dickson’s narrative sensibilities in these very early
kinetoscope experiments, must now be transferred back to the original creator of the
scenes, Ottomar Anschütz. Discussing Blacksmithing Scene (Musser No. 16), Horse
Shoeing (Musser No. 17), and The Barber Shop (Musser No. 18) as a group of three
successive productions at West Orange, Paul Spehr writes that the three films “are
interesting because they use props (furnace, anvil, hammers, a barber pole, barber
chair, etc.), and involve several ‘players’ to act out a brief comedy sketch. They were
amateur productions created by Dickson....Each of these films was intended to be
comedy....Although crude, these three films were [a] first step towards the story telling
tradition that has dominated commercial movie images.”50 But we now know that one of
these three films was a direct copy of an original idea and setting by Ottomar Anschütz.
And we also know that other Anschütz entertainment disks for his Schnellseher moving
picture system used props, involved several players, and were intended to be funny.
The short Anschütz dramas Lustige Fahrt (Funny Journey) and Zwei Zimmerleute
Früstückend (Two Carpenters Breakfasting) would be at the head of a list of subjects
that meet these criteria, a list which would also include Familie essend aus einem Topfe
(Family Eating from a Single Bowl) and Raufende Jungen (Boys Fighting). There are
others as well that involve props and settings: perhaps the most interesting to mention
16
here is an intensification of the subject that provoked Fred Ott’s Sneeze, as Anschütz
also produced a Schnellseher disk known as Zwei Herrn eine Prize Schnupftabak
nehmend (Two Men Taking a Pinch of Snuff), undoubtedly resulting in a double
sneeze.51 It was, of course, Ottomar Anschütz who produced these pre-kinetoscope
subjects that were a “first step towards the story telling tradition that has dominated
commercial movie images” to use Spehr’s words. He established the setting, the props,
the compact actions of the players, and it was his short films that produced an effect on
his audiences of “perfectly overpowering comical effect”, in only one and one-half
seconds of repeated “superbly true to nature” filmmaking for his Schnellseher moving
picture system.
Of all of the Anschütz entertainment disks, only one image is known to have survived, a
single frame of the series Skatspieler (Skat Players) visible in a photograph of the later
tabletop home model Schnellseher. [Fig 12] Skatspieler is known to have been used in
the Anschütz demonstrations of his drum model Schnellseher in April, 1890, in Vienna,
so it is undoubtedly a part of the large group of entertainment series that Anschütz
prepared in late 1889 and early 1890 as he began to work at commercialising his
moving picture system. The surviving image shows an exterior scene of three men
wearing hats seated around a simple table playing a game of skat, a trick-taking card
game popular in Germany that is
somewhat related to euchre or whist.
In discussing this film in the rest of
Europe, or in America, the film might
be re-titled The Card Players, or Card
Players, without at all
misrepresenting its contents. There
is, of course, a Lumière film widely
known by that same title outside
France, made on 16 January 1896,
chronologically the 13th Lumière
production.52 This film, Partie
d’écarté, made before January 1896,
shows an exterior scene of three
men wearing hats seated around an
elegant table playing a game of
écarté, a trick-taking card game
somewhat related to euchre or whist.
In Europe outside France, and in
Figure 12: A single fram e from the Anschütz film
America, this film is often called The
Skatspieler (Skat Players, Card Players). The
Card Players, or Card Players. The
chronophootographic sequence was taken som etim e
before April, 1890, when it was publicly exhibited in Vienna. point to be made here is that perhaps
we are all starting a bit too late by
The accidental survival of the im age com es as it was
m ounted in a hom e m odel Schnellseher with the viewing
beginning to discuss the work of
aperture specially lit, with the photograph republished in
moving picture pioneers only in 1895.
1926.
17
NOTES
1. Respectively: Martin Loiperdinger, Film & Schokolade. Stollwercks Geschäfte met lebenden Bildern
(Frankfurt a. M./Basel, 1999: Ström feld/Roter Stern); Cam ille Blot-W ellens, El cinematógrafo JolyNormandin (1896-1897). Dos colecciones: João Anacleto Rodrigues y Antonino Sagarmína (Madrid,
2014: Film oteca Española); Paul Spehr, The Man W ho Made Movies: W . K. L. Dickson (New Barnet,
2008: John Libbey Publishing); Marta Braun, Picturing Time. The W ork of Etienne-Jules Marey (18301904) (Chicago/London, 1992: University of Chicago Press).
2. John M. Staudenm aier, S.J., Technology’s Storytellers. Reweaving the Human Fabric (Cam bridge, MA /
London, 1983: The MIT Press/The Society for the History of Technology) p. 181.
3. Theodore Bläser, “Edison oder Lum ière?”, in Der Kom et, Nr. 601, 26 Septem ber 1896, page 2.
4. Author’s notes, press conference for the Centenery of the Cinem a, Cannes Film Festival, 1992. The
conference was packed with over 1300 representatives of the world’s film journalists, and Taverner’s
forceful defence of his statem ent continued well past the conference end. Several side debates broke out
as well, as several French historians and journalists supported Tavernier against a variety of other
viewpoints.
5. The Skladanowsky rotating shutter is a dead giveaway to the m achine’s antecedents in m agic lantern
work. For a thorough m odern treatm ent of Skladanowsky, see Joachim Castan, Max Skladanowsky, oder
der Beginn einer deutschen Filmgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1995: Füsslin Verlag). Castan is particularly strong
on how the Skladanowsky work was prom oted by the National Socialists as the Germ an inventor of
m oving pictures.
6. Handwritten letter of 28 August 1891, Ottom ar Anschütz to Siem ens & Halske, Siem ens Archiv,
Munich, File LN238. To the end of August, Anschütz claim ed m ore than 17,000 visitors. This letter opened
the negotiations over how Siem ens & Halske would be paid for the m ass m anufacture of autom at
Schnellsehers. It included a budget based on Anschütz’s past exhibition experience in Berlin. Anschütz is
talking here about his original m odel Schnellseher, where three or four persons were adm itted to a sm all
room divided by a partition behind which the Schnellseher was operated, each spectator paying a fee
upon entrance. This is the set-up in the fam ous Scientific American illustration, the only known im age of
the original m odel Schnellseher. In part, the attendance figures given in the letter are very precise: for the
week of 26 July to 1 August, 1916 persons, 2 August 475, 3-4 August 576, 5 August 450, 6-7 August 897,
18
etcetera.
7. Known Schnellseher exhibitions are detailed in Deac Rossell, “The Public Exhibition of Moving Pictures
before 1896", in: KINtop-Jahrbuch zur Erforschung des frühen Films, Nrs. 14/15 (2006), pp. 159 - 195;
and in Deac Rossell, Faszination der Bewegung. Ottomar Anschütz zwischen Photographie und Kino.
(Frankfurt am Main/Basel, 2001: Stroem feld / Roter Stern) ISBN 3-87877-774-4. Many Am erican
exhibitions of the Schnellseher are established in the present article for the first tim e, although there is still
m uch work to be done.
8. The new m odel was first seen at a m eeting of the Photographische Verein zu Berlin on 16 January
1890. See Photographische Nachrichten (Berlin), 1890, p. 67-8.
9. This drum -form Schnellseher, which could be operated by a single attendant, was first dem onstrated for
Carl Maria Eder on 21 and 22 April 1890, at the k. k. Graphischer Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna.
See Photographische Korrespondenz, 1890, p. 242. After this dem onstration, the drum Schnellseher was
exhibited publicly with an adm ission fee at a Lokal at Parkviny 2, Vienna, for a few weeks. See
Photographische Korrespondenz, 1890, Nr. 112, p. 511.
10. After an elaborate developm ent process, the first autom at Schnellseher from Siem ens & Halske was
finished and publicly exhibited at the Internationale Elektrotechnische Ausstellung in Frankfurt am Main in
early August, 1891. See Tagesanzeiger (der Internationale Elektrotechnische Ausstellung), No. 85, 8
August 1891.
11. For the various Schnellseher installations, Siem ens Archiv, Munich, file LN238, passsim. The Crystal
Palace reference is in Siem ens’ letter to Ottom ar Anschütz of 13 June 1892, ibid., file LN238.
12. It is a bit deceptive to talk about Schnellseher m oving pictures lasting only 1 ½ seconds, the
approxim ate tim e of a single revolution of its disk, since Anschütz was extrem ely careful to ensure in every
one of his sequences that the first im age and the last im age “m atched” so that the flow of the m ovem ent
was uninterrupted in the viewer’s perception as the series of im ages was repeated on the rotating disk.
Not only did Anschütz build the necessary adjustm ents into his cam era array, but he severely
overcom plicated the design of the autom at Schnellseher to ensure that it could show, perfectly sm oothly,
sequences with 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 and 24 phases. It took a well-experienced engineer to change a
disk in this m achine, an engineer that Siem ens & Halske dutifully sent off to New York City, to Ham burg,
and to other exhibitions of the Schnellseher. The key issue here is that in running for, say 15 seconds or
20 seconds for each coin dropped into the m achine, the Schnellseher presented uninterrupted, nonjum ping, unbroken m ovem ent that was watched for considerably longer than a couple of seconds by its
viewers, although at som e point each viewer would individually recognize that the m otions were repeating.
Charles Musser reports on a sim ilar phenom enon with the kinetoscope, which held a lim ited am ount
(usually 42 feet) of 35m m film looped around rollers: “Since kinetoscope film s were som etim es shown
m ore than once, and in any case were shown as loops in the kinetoscopes that did not necessarily turn on
and off at the beginning, film ing a single com plete action and the cyclical nature of these film s were
intertwined in a way that was not the case with Lum ière productions.” (Musser, Edison Motion Pictures
[Note 15, below], p. 47, n30.)
13. It is through records of m eetings of photographic societies that m ost of the inform ation about
Anschütz’s work survives, and in these m eetings he was alm ost exclusively interested in showing
traditional chronophotographic series that would prove the superiority of the m odelling, tonal range, and
clarity of his im ages over those of Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey. In striking contrast to
Edison, to date no press interviews with Anschütz have been found.
14. It is im portant to note that there was never a catalogue of Anschütz disk titles, nor any standard titles
displayed at the point of exhibition. The titles I am using here are those used in correspondence between
Anschütz and Siem ens & Halske for the identification of individual picture disks, which are in the m ain
19
supported by the narrative titles used on occasion by the press when disks were described in print.
Because Anschütz him self m ounted his series im ages in m etal disks prepared to his order by Siem ens &
Halske, and because the latter was shipping disks and apparatus together to London, New York, Berlin,
and other destinations, the correspondence between the two partners relied on standard “titles” to identify
the requisite subjects included with a Schnellseher. Each m achine was norm ally shipped with two disks,
and further disks could be ordered. A full Anschütz-W erke-Verzeichnis of all subjects used in the
Schnellseher is in preparation.
15. All references to Edison kinetoscope titles are from Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890 1900. An Annotated Filmography. W ashington, D. C. / Pordenone, 1997: Sm ithsonian Institution Press /
Le Giornate del cinem a m uto. Here, Musser No. 18, pp. 85 - 86.
16. On the opening of this first public com m ercial exhibition of the kinetoscope, see Paul Spehr, “Movies
and the Kinetoscope”, in André Gaudreault, ed., American Cinema 1890 - 1909 (New Brunswick / London,
2009: Rutgers University Press), pp. 22-3. See also Gordon Hendricks, The Kinetoscope (New York,
1966: The Beginnings of the Am erican Film ), pp. 56-60; and Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema:
The American Screen to 1907 (New York / Toronto, 1990: Charles Scribner’s Sons), p. 81.
17. Dr. Richard Neuhaus “Projection von Reihen - Aufnahm en”, in Photographische Rundschau, 1895, 1
Heft, p. 27. This was a review of the series’ use in a public exhibition of the Projecting Electrotachyscope
from 22 February 1895 onwards in the m ain auditorium of the Old Reichstag building, Leipzigerstrasse 4,
Berlin. Because this text is central to m y argum ents in this article, I give here the com plete passage in the
original Germ an: “Unter den von Anschütz vorgeführten Reihenaufnahm en ist das Einseifen beim Barbier
von geradezu überwältigender Kom ik: Ein Herr sitzt zurückgelehnt auf dem Stuhle; vor ihm steht der m it
Seife und Pinsel bewaffnete Barbier und waltet seines Am tes. Seitwärts zieht der Gehilfe das Messer auf
dem Streichriem en ab. Das langsam e Hin- und Herfahren des Messers auf dem Riem en, die
Körperbewegung des einseifenden Barbiers und das Fingerspiel das Eingeseiften sind von
unübertrefflicher Naturtreue.”
18. Charles Musser confirm s the regular presence of this film at Edison’s laboratory, com m enting that The
Barber Shop “was a film that visiting dignitaries and the press saw when passing through the Edison
Laboratory during the winter of 1893-94.” Musser, Edison Motion Pictures [Note 15], p. 26.
19. “Thom as Edison’s Latest Contrivance”, in the New York Herald, 11 March 1894, p2, cit. Musser,
Edison Motion Pictures, p. 85.
20. Northern Queensland Herald, 4 Septem ber 1895, cit. Ray Phillips, Edison’s Kinetoscope and its Films.
A History to 1896. (Trowbridge, W iltshire, 1997: Flicks Books), p. 120. The text continues at length with
the description of the waiting custom ers and their newspaper.
21. There is another point to be considered here am ongst the very early kinetoscope productions. W hile
the viewing apparatus, the kinetoscope, is known to have a lim ited capacity, som e 40 or 42 feet of film
looped over rollers, in the case of the recording apparatus, the vertical-feed cam era, the kinetograph, had
in theory no such physical lim its. It is em inently possible, at a tim e before there were any habits or patterns
to film m aking, releasing, and distributing, that a long shooting session on the kinetograph would sim ply be
chopped up into shorter lengths to fit the kinetoscope; this m ight be especially appropriate behaviour with
a subject that was as elaborately strewn with settings, properties and players as The Barber Shop. And in
the end, it is a second portion (or third?) of the overall shoot that has survived in this case. W e just do not
know enough about nascent production habits at the Black Maria to determ ine why a full 40 feet of The
Barber Shop is preserved but does not at all m atch two contem poraneous descriptions of the film .
Perhaps this case will m otivate som e research into alternative production/releasing habits at Edison.
22. Spehr, op. cit., p. 89.
20
23. Spehr, op. cit., p. 90.
24. I have argued elsewhere that all of the m oving picture experim enters – all of them , even the m ost
seem ingly isolated workers – knew som ething about each others’ work, in one way or another, and this
present article is yet another exam ple of how historians of early cinem a need to cast their nets very widely,
and, indeed, internationally, to pick up the crosscurrents and ripples of influence that were om nipresent at
the tim e am ongst the web of inventors, showm en, and entrepreneurs interested in m oving picture work.
See Deac Rossell, Serpentine Dance: Inter-National Connections in Early Cinema (Occasional Papers in
Modern Languages, Culture and Society, No. 1, 1999. Published by the Departm ent of European
Languages, Goldsm ith’s College, University of London).
25. Siem ens Archive, files LN238 and 239, passim for discussions of the construction of the coinoperating system s. Machines for London were equipped with penny m echanism s, Germ an m achines with
10 Pfennnig m echanism s. Siem ens & Halske, who did all of the developm ent work on this m echanism ,
were at one point quite cross with Anschütz when he subm itted a patent in his own nam e for their work.
26. Used extensively at the turn of the century and through W W I, this legendary 7-note m usical call and
response is still today deeply im printed in Am erican (and W estern) culture. One early m usical appearance
is in the 1899 song At a Darktown Cakewalk by Charles Hale. So Dickson’s sign about a “wonder” and “a
nickel” is very specifically a reflection on som ething that exists outside the scene being represented: the
Anschütz Electrical W onder [Schnellseher] and its price of adm ission [viewing].
27. I am including Heise here – and throughout the article – even though som e scholars, Paul Spehr in
particular, have suggested that he was an assistant to Dickson who added little of substance to the
kinetoscope productions. But as Musser suggests, “...the invention of the Edison m otion picture system
involved two collaborative pairings — Edison/Dickson and Dickson/Heise....Collaborations, based on
partnership practices, seem to have been crucial to the developm ent of m otion picture technology. Many
of the weighty debates about these inventions are disputes over which m em ber of a collaborative pair
deserves credit. This seem s counterproductive, insensitive to the nature of collaboration itself.” Musser,
Edison Motion Pictures (Note 15), p. 25. W hile not trying to overstate the case for Heise, I wish to be
inclusive in this m atter. I also recognize that am id the m any tasks involved in setting up the elaborate
scene of The Barber Shop the sign under consideration here m ight well have appeared sim ply as
evidence of the sense of hum or of one of the partners, or of one collaborator’s skill as a painter, or for
alm ost any m inim al reason.
28. See Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkeley / Los Angeles, 1961: University of
California Press), pp. 84 - 89, in part quoting W . K. L. Dickson him self in The Century Magazine, June
1894.
29. The New York Times, 16 March 1890, p. 16. The m en leaping and athletic sports were undoubtedly
Anschütz’s well-known sequences of one gym nast leaping over another with the aid of a springboard, a
javelin thrower, and an athlete hurling a large rock. The disks m entioned by the Times largely conform to
Anschütz’s norm al selection of publicity/press m aterials and does not include any of his entertainm ent
subjects. It is not known if the entertainm ent disks were available for subsequent dem onstrations.
30. ibid., p. 16
31. Marta Braun, Picturing Time [n. 1], p. 189. Also, Paul Spehr, The Man W ho Made Movies: W . K. L.
Dickson (New Barnet, 2008: John Libbey Publishers), p. 145 & 179.
32. Edison m ay well have m et Anschütz during this Berlin trip, given his prior look at the Schnellseher in
Paris and Anschütz’s close relations with Siem ens, apart from his high social standing with the Kaiser.
Edison filed his fourth m otion picture caveat at the US Patent Office in Novem ber, 1889, just a m onth after
his return from Europe and his visits in Paris and Berlin. This caveat has been long thought to have been
21
inspired by what he saw of Marey’s photographic work, and this is a logical inference, but Anschütz and
his Schnellseher are an equally likely influence on Edison at this tim e.
33. Siem ens Archive, Munich, file LN238, shipping note dated August, 1892 records 26 Schnellsehers,
accom panied by 52 picture disks, sent to Theodore Hellm an, 19 New Street, New York City. Hellm an was
born in Munich, a stock exchange m em ber with brokers Seligsberg & Com pany, and President of the
Eden Musee. There is no record of what specific disks were shipped with these m achines. On 29
Septem ber 1892 the Siem ens m echanic E. Zander, who had been sent to New York from Berlin to install
and m aintain the com plicated Schnellsehers, wrote to Siem ens from the Eden Musee address at 55 W est
23 rd Street that the installations at Koster & Bials and the Eden Musee were running, plus an additional 12
Schnellsehers at som ething called the Am . Inst. Dur. Produkts, with two m achines sent to Boston.
Siem ens Archive, File LN238. The m achines in New York City were still running when Zander wrote again
to his hom e office in Decem ber, 1892.
34. Terry Ram say, A Million and One Nights. A History of the Motion Picture. (New York, 1926: Sim on and
Schuster), V. 1, pp. 182-83. Ram say has his dates wrong. There is another curious hint here: Ram saye’s
book is well-known for its Edison bias and for the fact that Edison read the m anuscript before publication
and that Ram saye changed passages at the inventor’s request. Edison evidently had no argum ent with
this notice of the exhibition of the Schnellseher at the Eden Musee, perhaps because of the m isplaced
date. Ram saye’s text is also noted by Gordon Hendricks in The Kinetoscope (New York, 1966: The
Beginnings of the Am erican Film ), p. 90, where Hendricks says “the Anschütz Tachyscope [Schnellseher]
m ay have been displayed at various places in New York.” In The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkley,
1961: University of California Press), p. 12, Hendricks says of the Anschütz device that “m any were
installed in Am erica in the few years following 1889.” These interesting hints were never followed up in
print by Hendricks, who took a very strict view of his subject m atter and never allowed ‘stray’ m aterial to
seep from one book to another; whatever he knew was saved up until he had a m onograph-length study
that could be issued on a single topic. Nor were these hints picked up by any m odern historians.
35. Frederick A. Talbot, Moving Pictures. How They Are Made and W orked (London, 1912: W illiam
Heinem ann [U. S. Edition, Philadelphia, 1912: J. B. Lippincott Com pany]), p. 47. This error of Talbot’s is
one of several exam ples of claim s to have seen “The Kinetoscope” at the W orld’s Colum bian Exhibition in
Chicago, reports that confused m any historians until Gordon Hendricks m ade it clear that the Edison
device never appeared at the Chicago fair. All the newspaper reporters and other witnesses to the
kinetoscope at Chicago were actually viewing the Anschütz Schnellseher under its cleverly m isleading
label of “The Electrical W onder”.
36. A curious variant of Talbot’s text appears in his 1923 edition, p. 51, where Talbot now seem s to be
telling this story from Robert Paul’s perspective, as he contends that “The Teuton firm had assum ed
m anufacture because, as in Great Britain and France, the Am erican inventor [Edison] had not troubled to
protect his creation....” Talbot then m akes the outrageous claim that “the internal m echanism was identical
with the Edison kinetoscope, and used the standard film s,” the two m achines “only being withdrawn
because no new film s were forthcom ing.” This second account is m uch m ore inaccurate than Talbot’s
1912 version, and it is not helpful that it was the later edition [“entirely re-written”] that was reprinted in the
Arno Press series in the 1970s.
37. Schwartz was also involved in the United States Photographic Supply Com pany according to a brief
biographical sketch published in The Practical Photographer, January 1, 1893, pp. 8 - 9. My thanks to
Richard Brown for a copy of this article. On the Electrical W onder Com pany and its dissem ination of the
Schnellseher, see Deac Rossell, Faszination der Bewegung: Ottomar Anschütz zwischen Photogaphie un
Kino (Frankfurt am Main / Basle, 2001: Stroem feld / Roter Stern)[= KINtop Schriften 6], esp. pp. 85-117.
38. Brochure dated 15 April 1893, in English, of the Electrical W onder Com pany. Siem ens Archive, file
LN239. This was a form al announcem ent of the issue of the rem aining balance of the com pany’s capital, a
docum ent that is not preserved in the EW C files at the Public Record Office, Kew. Interestingly, Edison
22
had relinquished his concession to exhibit the kinetoscope (which was not ready) at the Fair on 7 April
1893 (Spehr, op. cit., p. 275). The organizing Com m ittee of the fair was well inform ed and worked quickly
in this m atter.
39. I can find no record of Dickson or Heise visiting the Chicago Exposition.
40. Thom as Arm at, “My Part in the Developm ent of the Motion Picture Projector”, in Journal of the SMPE,
Vol. 24, March 1935, reprinted in Raym ond Fielding, ed., A Technological History of Motion Pictures and
Television (Berkeley, 1967: University of California Press), pp. 17 - 22, here p. 17.
41. Or any com parison with the slightly later Edison film W restling Match (Musser No. 29), still m ade very
early, by early April, 1894.
42. Beginning in 1888, Anschütz m ade m ore than 100 sets of chronophotographs of dancers, intended to
be used by dance instructors and pupils. The first notice of this ongoing project appeared in the
photographic press in early 1891, but there had been reportedly no com m ercial return from these im ages
and the project was abandoned. No im ages are known to survive, although is possible that the
entertainm ent disks involving dancers (Tänzerin, Zwei Tänzerinnen) are survivors from this early m aterial.
There is also hardly a reference in print (and no surviving im ages) from a long com m ercial series that
Anschütz undertook in 1890-91 under a com m ission from the Deutsche Post of the work of the post office,
including series on letter carriers, post coaches, m ail sorting, and other typical operations of the post.
These series were exhibited in the m ain Berlin post office from 1891; the Schnellseher itself survives, but
none of the disks.
43. Library of Congress Press Release, Decem ber 16, 2015. The release lists the 25 film s added to the
Registry in 2015 by the National Film Preservation Board in consultation with Library staff. “Selecting a film
for the National Film Registry recognizes its im portance to cinem a and Am erica’s cultural and artistic
history,” said Acting Librarian of Congress David Mao. “The Registry is an invaluable way to advance
public awareness of the richness, creativity, and variety of our nation’s film heritage.” The full press
release can be found at: http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2015/15-216.htm l
44. Musser, op. cit., p. 87.
45. Spehr, op. cit., pp. 323-35 is very com plete on the gestation of this project, although I think there is
one m ore layer that needs discussion, the im pact of the Anschütz disk on all involved.
46. Barnet Phillips, “The Record of a Sneeze”, Harper’s W eekly, 24 March 1894, p. 280, cit. Musser, op.
cit., p. 88.
47. Spehr, op. cit., pp. 324-5 has the details of Phillips’s analysis.
48. Spehr, op. cit., p. 325.
49. In m y own m ind’s eye reconstruction of the Anschütz subject, for which there is still hope a m ore
substantial description (but probably not an im age) m ight be found, I do not see the sneezer’s right hand
holding an handkerchief and waving it around. I im agine this to be Dickson’s addition, like the newspaper
reader in The Barber Shop, where Dickson was able to display the advantages of working with longer
duration im agery on celluloid strips. Even in this brief ‘non-film ’ he did have 81 fram es, over three tim es
the num ber available through chronophotography’s 24. My m ental im pression of the Anschütz work is
brief, direct, and im m ediate. It m ight be described as much m ore an involuntary reaction than the Dickson
“perform ance.”
23
50. Spehr, op. cit., pp. 321-3. Ironically, in this sam e passage, in one of m y elisions, Spehr quotes the
entire sign visible in The Barber Shop, “The Latest W onder, Shave and Hair Cut for a nickel,” without at all
realising the text’s origin or m eaning. This is in fact perfectly understandable, since the history of the
Anschütz Schnellseher in Am erica, its availability and use, its m arketing and nom enclature, and its
entertainm ent disks has been virtually unknown to all early cinem a scholars. Much, m uch work rem ains to
be done, and we really, really need to know what the “Am . Inst. Dur. Produkts” was that absorbed 12
Schnellsehers in New York City in the Autum n of 1892.
51. There are no precedents yet known in the Anschütz entertainm ent series for either Blacksmithing
Scene or Horse Shoeing, although it is certain that there are m ore Anschütz entertainm ent series yet to be
identified. The potentially m ost intriguing Anschütz subject here is Zwei Zimmerleute früstückend (Two
Carpenters Breakfasting), a series from the sam e period in early 1890. If a description, or im age, of this
com edy is found that includes a little hearty drinking in the workshop early in the m orning, as m ight be
im agined as one thinks about how the subject could becom e a com ic entertainm ent, then there could well
be a connection to the Dickson titles, particularly Blacksmithing Scene.
52. See Michelle Aubert and Jean-Claude Seguin, La Production cinématographique des Frères Lumière
(Paris, 1996: Bibliothèque du Film / Editions Mém oires de ciném a), p. 485.
24
REFERENCES
Anon., “Photographic Travellers. No. 7. Arthur Schwarz”, in The Practical Photographer, January 1, 1893,
pp. 8 -9
Anon., Photographische Korrespondenz (Vienna, 1890)
Anon., Photographische Nachrichten (Berlin, 1890)
Anon., Tagesanzeiger (der Internationale Elektrotechnische Ausstellung), No. 85, 8 August 1891
(Frankfurt am Main, 1891)
Anon., “Seen in the Tachyscope”, The New York Times, March 16, 1890, p. 16
Michelle Aubert and Jean-Claude Seguin, La Production cinématographique des Frères Lumière (Paris,
1996: Bibliothèque du Film (BIFI) / Editions Mém oires de ciném a).
Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth. Berkeley, 1961: University of California Press.
Gordon Hendricks, The Kinetoscope. New York, 1966: The Beginnings of the Am erican Film .
Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890 - 1900. An Annotated Filmography. W ashington, D. C. /
Pordenone, 1997: Sm ithsonian Institution Press / Le Giornate del cinem a m uto.
Richard Neuhaus, “Projection von Reihen - Aufnahm en”, in Photographische Rundschau, 1895, 1. Heft,
pp. 25 - 7
Deac Rossell, Faszination der Bewegung: Ottomar Anschütz zwischen Photogaphie un Kino (Frankfurt
am Main / Basle, 2001: Stroem feld / Roter Stern). [= KINtop Schriften 6]
Deac Rossell, Serpentine Dance: Inter-National Connections in Early Cinema
(Occasional Papers in
Modern Languages, Culture and Society, No. 1, 1999. Published by the Departm ent of European
Languages, Goldsm ith’s College, University of London). [This departm ent no longer exists, nor
does its fugitive publications program m e. A copy can be found on m y pages at
www.academ ia.edu]
Terry Ram saye, A Million and One Nights (New York, 1926: Sim on & Schuster)
Siem ens Archive, Munich, Germ any, file 35-65/LN238, Schriftwechsel des Charlottenburger W erks betr.
Schnellseher, 1891 - 1892.
Siem ens Archive, Munich, Germ any, file 35-65/LN239, Schriftwechsel des Charlottenburger W erks m it
Ottom ar Anschütz betr. Schnellseher, 1893 - 4
Siem ens Archive, Munich, Germ any, file 35-65/LN240, Schriftwechsel des Charlottenburger W erks betr.
Schnellseher. Anschütz, Film technik, Gerat, Bestellwesen; 1895
Paul Spehr, The Man W ho Made Movies: W . K. L. Dickson (New Barnet, 2008: John Libbey Publishers)
Frederick A. Talbot, Moving Pictures. How They are Made and W orked. London, 1912: W illiam
Heinem ann. [also, “entirely re-written” edition of 1923, Philadelphia, J. B. Lippincott]
Deac Rossell
