Like so many of SciFiHistory.Net's readers, I do an awful lot of casual reading.
You know the type I mean? I'll surf the web, looking for general information about a past or present film or TV project, and then -- lo and behold -- I'll come across some nugget of information that either I've never heard before or just simply downright tickles my fancy. It's the kind of trivia I love to draw attention to, and I've finally figured out a means to do it here on the Main Page. Occasionally, I'll drop one of these 'Command Performance' posts, and I'm intending on using them to draw attention to new names, places, or events added to my citations. I hope you'll have as much discovering these details as I have finding them.
In all honesty, I've known for quite some time about Thomas Edison's involvement in motion pictures. The man invented the motion picture camera, for Pete's sake, so one might find it only reasonable that -- as a venture capitalist the way he was -- he's find some way to make use of it for a profit; and he did so by founding Edison Studios. From what I've read, he may have not have had much to do with the pictures produced; but we give credit where credit is due here at SciFiHistory.Net, and that's kinda/sorta what identifying Mr. Edison for today's Command Performance is all about.
What I didn't know was that the very first filmed presentation of Mary Shelley's immortal Frankenstein was done by Edison Studios!
So the written work that's largely recognized as the first authentic Science Fiction novel by many of the world's brainiest intellectuals, scholars, and academics enjoyed its very first visual interpretation by a film studio founded by Thomas Edison?! I'd say that's a Command Performance, indeed.
Not a wealth of other interesting information has been written about Edison Studios from what I've been able to find. It would seem that no one found much of merit in the production company's catalogue of over 1,000 features, deeming the majority of them as 'forgettable.' Apparently even this incarnation of Frankenstein was missing well after its presentation in 1910 until a copy of it was discovered in the 1970's. Now with the advent of modern technology it can be seen (for a price, of course) up on Amazon Video for those interested.
Again, I fully acknowledge that Edison himself was most likely not attached in any capacity to the motion picture short ... but Science Fiction certainly owes a modicum of respect to the man whose decisions inevitably helped shape the genre we spend so much of our time within.
As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!
-- EZ
You know the type I mean? I'll surf the web, looking for general information about a past or present film or TV project, and then -- lo and behold -- I'll come across some nugget of information that either I've never heard before or just simply downright tickles my fancy. It's the kind of trivia I love to draw attention to, and I've finally figured out a means to do it here on the Main Page. Occasionally, I'll drop one of these 'Command Performance' posts, and I'm intending on using them to draw attention to new names, places, or events added to my citations. I hope you'll have as much discovering these details as I have finding them.
In all honesty, I've known for quite some time about Thomas Edison's involvement in motion pictures. The man invented the motion picture camera, for Pete's sake, so one might find it only reasonable that -- as a venture capitalist the way he was -- he's find some way to make use of it for a profit; and he did so by founding Edison Studios. From what I've read, he may have not have had much to do with the pictures produced; but we give credit where credit is due here at SciFiHistory.Net, and that's kinda/sorta what identifying Mr. Edison for today's Command Performance is all about.
What I didn't know was that the very first filmed presentation of Mary Shelley's immortal Frankenstein was done by Edison Studios!
So the written work that's largely recognized as the first authentic Science Fiction novel by many of the world's brainiest intellectuals, scholars, and academics enjoyed its very first visual interpretation by a film studio founded by Thomas Edison?! I'd say that's a Command Performance, indeed.
Not a wealth of other interesting information has been written about Edison Studios from what I've been able to find. It would seem that no one found much of merit in the production company's catalogue of over 1,000 features, deeming the majority of them as 'forgettable.' Apparently even this incarnation of Frankenstein was missing well after its presentation in 1910 until a copy of it was discovered in the 1970's. Now with the advent of modern technology it can be seen (for a price, of course) up on Amazon Video for those interested.
Again, I fully acknowledge that Edison himself was most likely not attached in any capacity to the motion picture short ... but Science Fiction certainly owes a modicum of respect to the man whose decisions inevitably helped shape the genre we spend so much of our time within.
As always, thanks for reading ... and live long and prosper!
-- EZ
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