Raff & Gammon
{{short description|Film distribution company in the silent film era}}
Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon were two American businessmen who were known for distributing and promoting some of the Edison Studio films,{{Cite web|title=Raff and Gammon Collection|url=https://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/wes/indexes/alpha/content/1001954449.html|access-date=2020-02-08|website=Harvard Business School}} and founding their own business, which was called The Kinetoscope Company.
History
File:Bucking Broncho.webm", a film promoted by Raff & Gammon.]]
= Kinetoscope company =
In August 1894, Raff & Gammon earned rights to start selling Kinetoscopes.{{Cite book|last=Balio|first=Tina|title=The American Film Industry|year=1976|location=University of Wisconsin Press|pages=66}} One of their employees, Alfred Clark, made the company more popular by making new movies. In 1895, the Kinetoscope started to fade and became less popular with new film technology being created.{{Cite web|url=https://www.victorian-cinema.net/raff.php|title=Who's Who of Victorian Cinema|website=www.victorian-cinema.net|access-date=2020-02-08}} In 1896, C. Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat invented the Phantoscope. They showed the Phantoscope to Raff & Gammon, who were interested in it, so they agreed for the rights to the Phantoscope. They later showed this to the Thomas Edison Manufacturing Company, who started manufacturing the machine with permission.{{Cite web|title=(1895-1896)|url=http://www.loc.gov/static/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/articles-and-essays/history-of-edison-motion-pictures/shift-to-projectors-and-the-vitoscope.html|access-date=8 February 2020|website=Library Of Congress}} They then renamed the machine "The Edison Vitascope". They founded the Kinetoscope company (which was later renamed "Raff & Gammon") for exclusive rights for different territories and nations.{{Cite web|title=Guide to Motion Picture Catalogs - The Edison Papers|url=https://edison.rutgers.edu/mopix/earlproj.htm|access-date=2020-05-14|website=Rutgers University}}
== Fall ==
The company began to fall in October 1896, when consumers began purchasing high-quality technology similar to the Phantoscope, and more customers purchased those instead. More specifically, the American Mutoscope Company (better known as the Biograph Company), had produced a new motion picture system, which used more surface area than the Phantoscope. Shortly afterwards, the Biograph became more successful, and Raff & Gammon collapsed by the end of 1897.{{Cite web|title=Before the Nickelodeon|url=https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft3q2nb2gw&chunk.id=d0e3145&toc.id=&brand=ucpress|access-date=2020-05-21|website=California Digital Library|publisher=University of California}} The rights to the vitascope was bought by George W. Llewellyn shortly before the company ended.{{Cite book|last1=Musser|first1=Charles|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3Ld9BgAAQBAJ&q=raff+&pg=PA321|title=High-Class Moving Pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the Forgotten Era of Traveling Exhibition, 1880-1920|last2=Nelson|first2=Carol|date=2015-03-08|publisher=Princeton University Press|isbn=978-1-4008-7272-5|language=en|author-link=Charles Musser}}
Filmography
Source:{{Cite web|title=Raff and Gammon|url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b96939407|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210225144426/https://www2.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b96939407|url-status=dead|archive-date=February 25, 2021|access-date=2020-05-21|website=British Film Institute|language=en}}
- The Pickaninnies (1894)
- Barber Shop (1895)
- The Kiss (1896)
Archives and records
- [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HBS.Baker.EAD:bak00342 Raff and Gammon records] at Baker Library Special Collections, Harvard Business School.