The 5¢ Theatre Ticket

Today's History Lesson...the movies


A great way to celebrate Father's Day is to gather the family together for movie time. Treat Dad, or perhaps even Granddad, to one of his favorite movies of all time along with the popcorn, beer, wine or whatever beverage of his choice. Before the movie starts, engage everyone in conversation about the early stages of moviedom. It is very possible a "Dad" in your family might have recollections from a granddad, great Uncle, etc. that will whet your historical appetite.

This Day in History: June 19, 1905

Circa 1910
A nickelodeon theater in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
Nickelodeons often used gaudy posters and
ornamented facades to attract patrons,
but bare walls and hard seats usually awaited within.

The first projected motion pictures date mid-to-late 1800s with the Berlin Wintergarten theatre being the site of the first movie theater ever (1895). The earliest documented account of projected motion pictures in the United States was in June 1894 in Richmond, Indiana by Charles Francis Jenkins. Movie cameras had been on the scene since the late 1880s marked by inventors in both Europe and the United States, including Thomas Edison.

Today's focus is on the Nickelodeon, named after the U.S. five-cent coin, and the ancient Greek word odeion, a roofed-over theater. Earlier, "Peep show" machines (Kinetoscopes) had been the motion picture devices.

On June 19, 1905, some 450 people attend the opening day of the world’s first nickelodeon, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and developed by the showman Harry Davis...

The storefront theater boasted 96 seats and charged each patron five cents (5¢). Nickelodeons (named for a combination of the admission cost and the Greek word for “theater”) soon spread across the country. Their usual offerings included live vaudeville acts as well as short films. By 1907, some 2 million Americans had visited a nickelodeon, and the storefront theaters remained the main outlet for films until they were replaced around 1910 by large modern theaters. Read MORE...

The Senses of Cinema brought forth a new form of entertainment still very much alive today but nowhere resembling the humble beginnings.

Senses of Cinema

19th century

Ah-h-h! Where would we be without the movies—

a favorite pastime of enjoyment and relaxation?

Its presentation may have changed as technology has advanced,

but the emotions on and off the screen still remain the same.

Movies, the cinema, the silver screen 
Exposed on film metaphysical tricks 
Motion pictures and moving photoplays 
Rendered reeling picture shows known as flicks

Viewers, no matter the era or their age
Befell gripping sights, sounds, even smells
What better means to idle away the time
Than captured under a magic spell

From slides in the magic-latern show
To successive motion in flip books
Quests out of touch with reality
Dangled from supernatural hooks

From the beginning of cinema

To the first appearance of sound

Optical toys and shadowbox shows

Played magical tricks all around

 

 Quickly becoming popular in carnivals 
The "peep show" made a dramatic stand 
As the forerunner of motion picture films 
The Kinetoscope primed movie land
.

Edison Kinetoscope Record of a Sneeze

 ©2013 Awakenings
Sharla Lee Shults

Classic Movie Kisses


Don't Forget. . .