:William Kennedy Dickson

{{Redirect|WK Dickson|the advocate, librarian and writer|William Kirk Dickson}}

{{Infobox person

| birth_name = William Kennedy Laurie Dickson

| image = Dickson greeting cropped.jpg

| image_size = 180px

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

| birth_date = {{birth date|df=yes|1860|8|3}}

| birth_place = Le Minihic-sur-Rance, Brittany, France

| death_date = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1935|9|28|1860|8|3}}

| death_place = Twickenham, Middlesex, England

| occupation = {{hlist|Inventor|director|producer|cinematographer|studio owner|actor}}

| spouse =

| parents =

| children =

}}

William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (3 August 1860 – 28 September 1935) was a British-American inventor who devised an early motion picture camera under the employment of Thomas Edison.[http://living.scotsman.com/features/Adventures-in-motion-pictures.2312382.jp "it was his Scottish protégé, William Dickson, who... "], The Scotsman, 23 March 2002[http://www.scienceandsociety.co.uk/results.asp?image=10301013&wwwflag=2&imagepos=1 "William Dickson, Scottish inventor and photographer"], Science & Society Picture Library, accessed 18 September 2010

Early life

William Kennedy Dickson was born on 3 August 1860 in Le Minihic-sur-Rance, Brittany, France. His mother, Elizabeth Kennedy-Laurie (1823–1879) was American, born in Virginia.{{Cite web |title=William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, b.1860 d.1935 – Ancestry® |url=https://www.ancestry.co.uk/genealogy/records/william-kennedy-laurie-dickson-24-r1xqxx |access-date=2 August 2024 |website=www.ancestry.co.uk |language=en-US}} 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.{{cite ODNB |last1=Spehr |first1=Paul C. |title=Dickson, William Kennedy Laurie |date=2011 |doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/46453 |url=https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/46453 |access-date=21 April 2021}} 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.{{cite book |last1=Rogers |first1=Molly |title=The Oxford Companion to the Photograph |date=2005 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0198662716 |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662716.001.0001/acref-9780198662716-e-838?rskey=pmrPZS&result=2 |access-date=21 April 2021}} Dickson, then the Edison company's official photographer, 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 Étienne-Jules Marey, Edison came up with a fourth caveat and ordered the team to change direction to work with rolls of film. William Dickson collaborated with the Eastman company to develop a practical celluloid film for this application. Initially using 19mm film, fed horizontally, shooting circular images, Dickson eventually settled on 35 mm film with a 1.33:1 picture ratio, a standard format which is still in use to this day in cinema.{{Cite book|last=Spehr|first=Paul C.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/946887787|title=Moving images : from Edison to the webcam|others=Fullerton, John, 1949–, Söderbergh-Widding, Astrid., Stockholms universitet. Filmvetenskapliga institutionen.|year=2000|isbn=978-0861969173|location=[Place of publication not identified]|pages=3–28|oclc=946887787}}

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.{{Cite web|title=Who's Who of Victorian Cinema|url=https://www.victorian-cinema.net/edison|website=www.victorian-cinema.net|access-date=24 May 2020}} 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 perforated film, bearing sequential images, whilst illuminating it by brief flashes of light through the slit in a rotating shutter. They also devised the Kinetograph, a motion picture camera to photograph films for in-house experiments and eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations, at speeds of up to 46 frames per second. To govern the 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.Gosser (1977), pp. 206–207; Dickson (1907), part 3.

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, Woodville Latham who had lectured in science. Seeking to develop a movie projector system, they hired former Edison employee Eugene Lauste, probably at Dickson's suggestion. In April 1895, Dickson left Edison's employ and provided some assistance to the Latham outfit. Alongside Lauste, he may have devised what would become known as the Latham loop, allowing the photography and exhibition of much longer filmstrips than had previously been possible.{{Cite web|title=Happy 125th Birthday, Cinema! Part 1|url=https://friesegreene.com/2020/05/20/happy-125th-birthday-cinema-part-1/|last=Domankiewicz|first=Peter|date=20 May 2020|website=William Friese-Greene & Me|language=en|access-date=24 May 2020}} This idea had first been made public in 1890 in descriptions of the moving picture camera of William Friese-Greene.{{Cite journal|date=19 April 1890|title=A Machine Camera For Taking Ten Photographs A Second|journal=Scientific American Supplement|volume=29|issue=746|pages=11921}} These former Edison associates helped to design the Eidoloscope projector system and a widescreen camera to film with, which would be used in the first commercial movie screening in world history on 20 May 1895.{{Cite web|title=Happy 125th Birthday, Cinema! Part 2|url=https://friesegreene.com/2020/05/20/happy-125th-birthday-cinema-part-2/|last=Domankiewicz|first=Peter|date=20 May 2020|website=William Friese-Greene & Me|language=en|access-date=24 May 2020}} But Dickson soon parted company with them, to become part of the group that formed the 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 Mutoscope machines produced moving images by means of a revolving drum of photographs/frames, similar in concept to 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.{{cite web| title = History| publisher = American Mutoscope & Biograph Co| year = 2006| url = http://www.biographcompany.com/history_home.html| access-date = 16 October 2006}}{{cite web| title = Let's Go to the Movies: The Mechanics of Moving Images| work = Exhibit Archives| publisher = Museum of American Heritage| date = 17 September 2001| url = http://www.moah.org/exhibits/archives/movies/technology_development.html| access-date = 16 October 2006}}

Death

His association with Biograph ended inexplicably in 1911. Dickson spent his last years quietly in his house in Twickenham, England. He died on 28 September 1935, at the age of 75. He died without being given credit for his contributions to the history of modern filmography."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& This omission was corrected by the exhaustive research of Gordon Hendricks{{Cite book|last=Hendricks, Gordon.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/354659|title=Origins of the American film.|date=1972|publisher=Arno Press|isbn=0405039190|location=New York|oclc=354659}} and Paul Spehr{{Cite book|last=Spehr, Paul C.|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/980739309|title=The man who made movies : W.K.L. Dickson|date=2008|publisher=John Libbey Pub.|isbn=978-0861969364|location=New Barnet, Herts, UK|oclc=980739309}} 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 The Dickson Experimental Sound Film. A man (likely Dickson) played "The Song of the Cabin Boy" on the violin into a megaphone used for a partially off-camera phonograph. The film was the first to use the Kinetophone, the first device used in the earliest sound films.Hendricks, Gordon (1966). The Kinetoscope: America's First Commercially Successful Motion Picture Exhibitor. New York: Theodore Gaus' Sons. Reprinted in Hendricks, Gordon (1972). Origins of the American Film. New York: Arno Press/New York Times. {{ISBN|0-405-03919-0}}

Publications

The Biograph in Battle (T. Fisher Unwin, London 1901). (reprinted Flicks Books, UK, 1995). {{ISBN?}}
History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kinetophonograph (with Antonia Dickson, MOMA Publications 2000 {{ISBN|978-0870700385}} Facsimile of Dickson's own copy of the book published in 1895)
An Authentic Life of Edison. The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison. (with Antonia Dickson, 8 volumes. New-York. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 1894){{cite news |title=An Authentic Life of Edison. The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison |quote=By W. K. L. Dickson and Antonia Dickson. Illustrated with drawings and photographs. 8 vo. New-York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. |newspaper=New York Times |date=11 November 1894 }}
Timeline, the history of editing (John Buck 2018). (incl Dickson inventions)(Tablo Books {{ISBN|978-1922192295}}).

References

John Barnes, Filming the Boer War (Bishopsgate Press, UK, 1992){{ISBN?}}
Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, 1990) {{ISBN?}}
Richard Brown and Barry Anthony, A Victorian Film Enterprise:The History of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company (Flicks Books, UK, 1997) {{ISBN?}}
Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: the American Screen to 1907 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, 1990) {{ISBN?}}
Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (University of California Press, US, 1991) {{ISBN?}}
William and Antonia Dickson, History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kinetophonograph (MOMA Publications 2000 {{ISBN|978-0870700385}})
Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Arno Press, US, 1972) {{ISBN?}}
Ray Phillips, Edison's Kinetoscope and its Films – a History to 1896 (Flicks Books, UK, 1997){{ISBN?}}
Paul Spehr, The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson (John Libbey Publishing Ltd, UK, 2008){{ISBN?}}

External links

[https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146653609 www.ucl.ac.uk]
{{Internet Archive author |sname=William Kennedy Dickson |sopt=t}}
{{Victorian Cinema|dickson.htm}}
[http://www.biographcompany.com/celebrity/dickson.html Biography of Dickson]
[http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/magazine.cfm?id=316242002 Adventures in motion pictures] The Scotsman newspaper
[https://www.loc.gov/item/00694118/ Dickson Greeting – Library of Congress]
{{IMDb name|0005690}}
[http://dixam.ru/iskusstvo/samoe-pervoe-video-kotov/ Two cats in a boxing match]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20150923232425/http://www.earlycinema.com/pioneers/dickson_bio.html earlycinema.com – W.K.L Dickson]