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Category: Paper Prints

A view looking past a digital display screen towards the doors of an indoor theater, with

Happy Fourth!

Posted by: Bryan Cornell

This post was co-written by Karen Fishman and Mike Mashon.   Here are some selections from the film and audio collection to help you celebrate The Fourth of July. The audio comes from the Library’s National Jukebox which includes over 10,000 streaming recordings dating from 1900 to 1925, a time when patriotic music was extremely …

A view looking past a digital display screen towards the doors of an indoor theater, with

The Sound of Silents

Posted by: Mike Mashon

Silent films were never silent. From their earliest days as an exhibition attraction, motion pictures were accompanied by some form of music–typically a piano, a musical combo in more modest sized houses, and sometimes an entire orchestra in movie palaces. In some instances, the pianist was joined by a drummer employing sound effects, something I’ve …

A view looking past a digital display screen towards the doors of an indoor theater, with

Where It All Began: The Paper Print Collection

Posted by: Mike Mashon

The Library’s moving image collections began with a bureaucratic decision. In August 1893, an unnamed employee (but most likely W.K.L. Dickson) of the Thomas Edison Laboratories in West Orange, NJ, where work had been going on for several years to develop motion picture photography, sent sequential frames from various camera tests to the Copyright Office. …