Wow! I didn't realize there were any existing copies.

The article presents an interesting concept, but horrible writing.

Not to mention the photo below it that probably is probably beyond most people's NSFW threshold, especially if they're really at work.

Brown Sauce: Earguy: The article presents an interesting concept, but horrible writing.

So you don't like being told to "Just keep reading for the skinny!"?

Great, you just invented the next headline meme. Damn you!

Bathia_Mapes: Wow! I didn't realize there were any existing copies.

There are many copies.

I've seen that movie. It's on Google Videos. I expect they have re-mastered it if it is coming out on DVD. Some of the prints are extremely poor quality, seeing as it was released in 1910.

Just Google Video it: http://video.google.com/

The French were pioneers in moving making art and they racked up quite an impressive series of early productions and techniques. The French seem to have a history of gaining substantial head starts and then falling behind.

I remember Minitel, for example, from the mid-80s. The French phone company (-ies) replaced their telephone books in EVERY home with a terminal not unlike a small monochrome 80s Apple. You could dial up services, free and commercial, using a code like you now use on a cellphone. There were bulletin boards--it was like a wee Internet. It was fricking cool and there was nothing like it in North America for another ten years.

Then ARPANET metastasized into Skynet and the French technology ended up looking as quaint as Sarah O'Connor's chances of taking a perfumed bath in peace and quiet while the kid plays with his video games.

Edison was a hack. He didn't invent shiat. He stole other people's ideas (mostly immigrants) and called them his own.

Shadowknight: He didn't create the lightbulb. He didn't create nearly anything he took credit for. The man was less an inventor so much as a brilliant marketer and manipulator.

To give credit where it's due, he perfected a number of inventions in ways that made them practical. The tungsten light bulb filament, the cylinder phonograph, the sprocketed film camera/projector and all his refinements to the telegraph are examples of this.

Yes he was a master of marketing but he was also a master of taking novel concepts and turning them into something workable.

I've seen a bunch of the early Edison studio movies and they're generally quite crude (which is to be expected). I'll have to check this one out.