A Million and One Nights

Traces the early history of films from the development of movie photography to the era of silent films. As Terry Ramsaye noted in his landmark 1925 book, A Million and One Nights: "Mark you well this Edison peep show Kinetoscope. Every strand in the thread of motion picture destiny runs through it. It is the inescapable link between the gropings of the past and the attainment of the present. Every motion picture machine, every motion picture enterprise, every motion picture personality, screen star or magnate of the screen theatre can be traced to some connection growing out of the little black box that Edison dubbed the Kinetoscope. This is one of the absolute facts of the history of the motion picture"(Ramsey, pp. 72-73).