Thomas A. Edison Movies

This Edison short features famed cyclist Neidert performing a series of impressive bicycle stunts on stage, including riding backwards, balancing on...

The only known moving-image footage of the author, filmed at his home, Stormfield, in Redding, Connecticut. The silent short shows Twain walking...

A showcase of trapeze artist Alciede Capitaine, billed as “The Perfect Woman,” whose daring feats on the flying bar combined grace with...

The Old Violin (1914) is a Kinetophone short produced by Edison, directed by Daniel Higham. The film features an elderly violinist reprimanding a...

A Kinetophone short featuring Andrew Carnegie speaking on “The Duty of the Wealthy Man,” recorded January 20, 1914, at Edison’s...

An Edison Kinetophone short featuring leading suffragists Harriet May Mills, Mrs. James Lees Laidlaw, Mrs. Raymond Brown, Mrs. John Rogers, Jr., and...

A location actuality filmed in Philadelphia (May 27–28, 1904) documenting the Inter-Collegiate Athletic Association’s championships:...

A line is shot to the man clinging to the overturned boat. He fastens it to his body using all his fast failing strength. The crew pull him through...

Starting for the Fire (1896), directed by James H. White for the Edison Manufacturing Company, was filmed on location in Newark, New Jersey. The...

A satirical short produced to highlight the unreasonable extremes of local film censorship—a film so heavily censored that only the title cards...

A short film in which the members of the Motion Pictures Patents Company (which had been founded only a year earlier) congratulate Thomas Edison...

This 1894 film depicts a staged “war council” featuring a group of Sioux men in traditional dress, seated in deliberation as Buffalo Bill...

The Passion Play of Oberammergau (1898) presents scenes from the famed Bavarian passion play, dramatizing the final days of Jesus Christ—from...

The Birth of the Telephone (1914) is a Kinetophone short produced by Edison, featuring Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell,...

An Edison Kinetophone short presenting an on-stage minstrel company performing musical numbers and patter; made as part of Edison’s early...

With a tree-lined river bank dominating the top and back of the frame, the Charles River flows toward a stationary camera. A flotilla of canoes...

Shows ice plows in operation, drawn by horses and guided by men on skates. The plows are first operated in one direction and then crosswise, cutting...

A beautiful panoramic view of lower New York from Barclay Street to Battery Park, showing a beautiful stereoscopic effect of the sky-scrapers in the...