William Kennedy Dickson

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"WK Dickson" redirects here. For the advocate, librarian and writer, see William Kirk Dickson.

William Kennedy Dickson
Frame from the 1891 Dickson Greeting, featuring William Kennedy Dickson, in the first American film shown to a public audience.
Born
William Kennedy Laurie Dickson

(1860-08-03)3 August 1860
Le Minihic-sur-Rance, Brittany, France
Died28 September 1935(1935-09-28) (aged 75)
Twickenham, Middlesex, England
Occupations

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a

motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison.[1][2]

Early life

William Kennedy Dickson was born on 3 August 1860 in Le Minihic-sur-Rance, Brittany, France. His mother was Elizabeth Kennedy-Laurie (1823?–1879) who may have been born in Virginia. His father was James Waite Dickson, a Scottish artist, astronomer and linguist. James Dickson claimed direct lineage from the painter William Hogarth, and from Judge John Waite, the man who sentenced King Charles I to death.

Inventor and film innovator

At age 19 in 1879, William Dickson wrote a letter to American inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison seeking employment. He was turned down. That same year Dickson, his mother, and two sisters moved from Britain to Virginia.[3] In 1883 he was finally hired to work at Edison's laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey. In 1888, Edison conceived of a device that would do "for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear". In October, Edison filed a preliminary claim, known as a caveat, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office; outlining his plans for the device, subsequently named the Kinetoscope.[4] Dickson, then the Edison company's official photographer,[3] was assigned to turn the concept into a reality.

Initial attempts were focused on recording micro-photographs on a cylinder. In late 1889, inspired by a recent encounter with

35 mm film with a 1.33:1 picture ratio, a standard format which is still in use to this day in cinema.[5]

William Dickson and his team, at the Edison lab, simultaneously worked on the development of the Kinetoscope viewing machine. The first working prototype, using the 19mm film, was unveiled in May 1891 to a meeting of the National Federation of Women's Clubs, hosted by his wife. The 35mm camera was essentially finalised by the fall of 1892. The completed version of the 35mm Kinetoscope was unveiled at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on 9 May 1893.[6] It was a peep show machine showing a continuous loop of film, lit by a small lamp, viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components.

William Dickson and his team created the illusion of movement by continuously moving the strip of

intermittent movement of the film in the camera, allowing the strip to stop long enough so each frame could be fully exposed and then advancing it quickly (in about 1/460 of a second) to the next frame, the sprocket wheel that engaged the strip was driven by an escapement disc mechanism—the first practical system for the high-speed stop-and-go film movement that would be the foundation for the next century of cinematography.[7]

In late 1894 or early 1895, William Dickson became an ad hoc advisor to the motion picture operation of the Latham brothers, Otway and Grey, who ran one of the leading Kinetoscope exhibition companies, and their father,

American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, returning permanently to work in the United Kingdom in 1897 for the British side of the company. William Dickson was the first person to make a film of the Pope, and at the time his Biograph camera was blessed by Pope Leo XIII
.

The

flip-books, taken from an actual piece of film. They were often featured at seaside locations, showing (usually) sequences of women undressing or acting as an artist's model. In Britain, they became known as "What the butler saw" machines, taking the name from one of the first and most famous softcore reels.[11][12]

Death

His association with Biograph ended inexplicably in 1911. Dickson spent his last years quietly in his house in Twickenham, England. He died on September 28, 1935, at the age of 75. He died without being given credit for his contributions to the history of modern filmography.[13] This omission was corrected by the exhaustive research of Gordon Hendricks[14][15] and Paul Spehr[16] who revealed the full extent of his contributions to many moving picture projects.

Legacy

Dickson was the first to direct and likely star in a film with live recording. In 1894, he directed

sound films.[15]

Publications

See also

References

  1. ^ "it was his Scottish protégé, William Dickson, who... ", The Scotsman, 23 March 2002
  2. Science & Society Picture Library
    , accessed 18 September 2010
  3. ^
    doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/46453. Retrieved 21 April 2021. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  4. ISBN 978-0198662716
    . Retrieved 21 April 2021.
  5. OCLC 946887787.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  6. ^ "Who's Who of Victorian Cinema". www.victorian-cinema.net. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  7. ^ Gosser (1977), pp. 206–207; Dickson (1907), part 3.
  8. ^ Domankiewicz, Peter (20 May 2020). "Happy 125th Birthday, Cinema! Part 1". William Friese-Greene & Me. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  9. ^ "A Machine Camera For Taking Ten Photographs A Second". Scientific American Supplement. 29 (746): 11921. 19 April 1890.
  10. ^ Domankiewicz, Peter (20 May 2020). "Happy 125th Birthday, Cinema! Part 2". William Friese-Greene & Me. Retrieved 24 May 2020.
  11. ^ "History". American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. 2006. Retrieved 16 October 2006.
  12. ^ "Let's Go to the Movies: The Mechanics of Moving Images". Exhibit Archives. Museum of American Heritage. 17 September 2001. Retrieved 16 October 2006.
  13. ^ "William Kennedy Dickson." Historic Camera. May. 2013. Retrieved 30 July. 2017. http://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=2512&
  14. OCLC 354659
    .
  15. ^
    ISBN 0-405-03919-0
  16. OCLC 980739309
    .
  17. New York Times
    . 11 November 1894. By W. K. L. Dickson and Antonia Dickson. Illustrated with drawings and photographs. 8 vo. New-York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

External links

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