During the rest of the 1890s, Thomas Edison worked on various other related projects, mostly through the help of his underpaid assistants; the most important of these to realizing Edison's bought-off patents was William Kennedy Dickson.Dickson, a French-born expatriate of Scottish descent, directed and starred in Edison's first publicly-shown film, released in 1891:
By 1893, Dickson had created many more films for Edison, including the momentous Dickson Experimental Sound Film; in it, he played the violin (though not entirely in tune) as Edison barked orders out of sight, shortly before filming began:
Frankly, the only reason I'm including Dickson in this series of posts is because of what he did after his career with Edison; in 1895, he founded the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, which, just three years later, sued Edison for his claim of having invented the motion picture camera. As key witnesses, Mutoscope called Adolphe Le Prince, Louis Le Prince's son, to testify that his father had patented his device before Edison.
Though the case eventually went against Mutoscope, I still give Dickson the benefit of the doubt for attempting to publicize Le Prince's achievements, and for that, he earns a post on my blog for having gone against his horrible boss.
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