Library of Congress National Digital Library announces release of Edison Collection

[Tamara Swora <tswo@xxxxxxx>]

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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

http://memory.loc.gov

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
ndlpcoll@xxxxxxx