Arts & Culture
At Thomas Edison's laboratory complex in West Orange, New Jersey, the Black Maria became one of the decisive starting points of the motion picture industry as the world's first widely recognized movie studio. Completed in 1893 for films made for the Kinetoscope, its small tar-paper structure used a roof opening and a turntable to capture strong sunlight needed by early film stock. Some of the earliest motion pictures were made there, including the first public demonstration of Edison films in 1893 and Fred Ott's Sneeze in 1894, the earliest motion picture registered for copyright. It helped turn moving pictures from experiment into commercial entertainment.
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New Jersey · United States
