Born in France to British parents, William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson
stayed in that country until age 19, when he, his mother and sisters
(their father had died sometime before) returned to Great Britain. Once
there, Dickson--in an early indication of his lifelong fascination
with science and mechanics--began a correspondence with
Thomas A. Edison in the US, asking
for employment, but was turned down. Eventually Dickson's family moved
to the US, and several years afterward Dickson actually did land a
job with Edison, and soon proved to be a trusted and valuable
associate. He worked closely with Edison on the development of both the
phonograph and, closer to Dickson's heart, the motion picture (it was
Dickson who eventually decided that motion picture film should be 35mm
wide; he also developed the emulsion process used in the film).
In 1889, while Edison was on a trip to Europe, Dickson set up a
building in which to conduct his "photographic experiments", the
forerunner of the first motion picture studio. In 1890 he and his chief
mechanical assistant, Eugène Lauste, showed
the results of their experiments, produced on a cylindrical system
called the Kinetoscope: a short film called
Monkeyshines, No. 1 (1890),
featuring one of his assistants. Improvements on this system continued,
and in 1891 patents were filed on an improved camera called the
Kinetograph. Edison's plans to exhibit the new system at the Chicago
World Exposition necessitated not only the production of many new
machines but also films that could be shown on them, and the result was
the building of a film studio at Edison's laboratory in West Orange,
NJ, which was nicknamed "The Black Maria" because it was
constructed of wood covered with tar-paper, resembling the police
wagons of that era which were known by that nickname.
However, even with Dickson's perfecting of a new version of the
Kinetograph camera, not enough films were completed to be shown at
Edison's planned exhibition. Dickson, however, did manage to persuade
many stage and vaudeville stars to appear in films shot at the West
Orange studio, and in the following years the studio was a beehive of
activity, with some of the biggest names of the era making short films
there. However, friction between Dickson and an executive appointed to
oversee Edison's businesses soon broke into open conflict,
resulting in Dickson's angrily leaving Edison's employ in 1895. He then
joined forces with two businessmen in the development of a way to
exhibit films differently than Edison's peepshow-style Kinetoscope. The
system eventually developed into what was called the Mutoscope, and the
camera that was developed to take pictures for the Mutoscope was called
the Biograph. This in turn developed into a filming and
projection system that retained the Biograph name.
In 1896 Dickson and three partners began the American Mutoscope and
Biograph Co. (often referred to as just "Biograph", and generally
considered to be the first major American motion picture studio) to
produce and distribute films. Dickson produced and directed many of
Biograph's early films, but by the turn of the century he had taken
over management of the company's European branch, headquartered in
England. He died there in 1935.
