A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards. The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is nearly as old as film itself, but because of the technical challenges involved, synchronized dialogue was only made practical in the late 1920s with the perfection of the audion amplifier tube and the introduction of the Vitaphone system. After the release of ''The Jazz Singer'' in 1927, "talkies" became more and more commonplace. Within a decade, popular production of silent films had ceased.

Elements (1894 – 1929)

The first projected sequential proto-movie was made by Eadweard Muybridge some time between 1877 and 1880. The first narrative film was created by Louis Le Prince in 1888. It was a two-second film of people walking in ''Oakwood streets'' garden, entitled ''Roundhay Garden Scene''. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" before silent films were replaced by "talking pictures" in the late 1920s. Many film scholars and buffs argue that the aesthetic quality of cinema decreased for several years until directors, actors, and production staff adapted to the new "talkies".

The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high. However, there is a widely held misconception that these films were primitive and barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes as a result of silent films being played back at wrong speed and their deteriorated condition. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often copied from already damaged and neglected film stock.

Intertitles

Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen intertitles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the cinema audience. The ''title writer'' became a key professional in silent film and was often separate from the ''scenario writer'' who created the story. Intertitles (or ''titles'' as they were generally called at the time) often became graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decoration that commented on the action.

Live music and sound

Showings of silent films almost always featured live music, starting with the pianist at the first public projection of movies by the Lumière Brothers on December 28, 1895 in Paris. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing to the atmosphere and giving the audience vital emotional cues. (Musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons.) Small town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a pianist. Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have organists or ensembles of musicians. Massive theater organs were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra. Theatre organs had a wide range of special effects; theatrical organs such as the famous "Mighty Wurlitzer" could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of percussion effects such as bass drums and cymbals and sound effects ranging from galloping horses to rolling thunder.

Film scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by Joseph Carl Breil for D. W. Griffith's groundbreaking epic ''The Birth of a Nation'' (USA, 1915) it became relatively common for the biggest-budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores.

When organists or pianists used sheet music, they still might add improvisatory flourishes to heighten the drama onscreen. Even when special effects were not indicated in the score, if an organist was playing a theater organ capable of an unusual sound effect, such as a "galloping horses" effect, it would be used for dramatic horseback chases.

By the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians (at least in America). But the introduction of talkies, which happened simultaneously with the onset of the Great Depression, was devastating to many musicians.

Some countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early cinema of Brazil featured ''fitas cantatas'': filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. In Japan, films had not only live music but also the ''benshi'', a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The ''benshi'' became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. The popularity of the ''benshi'' was one reason why silent films persisted well into the 1930s in Japan.

Few film scores survive intact from this period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions when they attempt to precisely reconstruct those that remain. Scores can be distinguished as complete reconstructions of composed scores, newly composed for the occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries, or even improvised.

Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. There was a belief in many college film programs and repertory cinemas that audiences should experience silent film as a pure visual medium, undistracted by music. This belief may have been encouraged by the poor quality of the music tracks found on many silent film reprints of the time. More recently, there has been a revival of interest in presenting silent films with quality musical scores, either reworkings of period scores or cue sheets, or composition of appropriate original scores. A watershed event in this context was Kevin Brownlow's 1980 restoration of Abel Gance's ''Napoléon'' (1927) featuring a score by Carl Davis. Brownlow's restoration was later distributed in America re-edited and shortened by Francis Ford Coppola with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola.

In 1984, a restoration of ''Metropolis'' (1927) with new score by producer/composer Giorgio Moroder was another turning point in modern day interest in silent films. Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddy Mercury of Queen, Pat Benatar and Jon Anderson of Yes was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to presentation of classic "silent" films. Perhaps one of the few actors of the silent era still active is Dutch-German movie-star Johannes Heesters, aged 107.

Music ensembles currently perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films. Purveyors of the traditional approach include organists and pianists such as Dennis James, Rick Friend, Chris Elliott, Dennis Scott, Clark Wilson and Jim Riggs. Orchestral conductors such as Gillian B. Anderson, Carl Davis, Carl Daehler, and Robert Israel have written and compiled scores for numerous silent films. In addition to composing new film scores, Timothy Brock has restored many of Charlie Chaplin's scores.

Contemporary music ensembles are helping to introduce classic silent films to a wider audience through a broad range of musical styles and approaches. Some performers create new compositions using traditional musical instruments while others add electronic sounds, modern harmonies, rhythms, improvisation and sound design elements to enhance the film watching experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Alloy Orchestra, Club Foot Orchestra, Silent Orchestra, Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra and The Reel Music Ensemble. Alloy Orchestra, which began performing in 1990, is among the first of the new wave of silent film music ensembles.

Acting techniques

Silent film actors emphasized body language and facial expression so that the audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or campy. The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. The pervading presence of stage actors in film was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917: "The sooner the stage people who have come into pictures get out, the better for the pictures." In other cases, directors such as John Griffith Wray required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen.

In any case, the large image size and unprecedented intimacy the actor enjoyed with the audience began to affect acting style, making for more subtlety of expression. Actresses such as Mary Pickford in all her films, Eleonora Duse in the Italian film ''Cenere'' (1916), Janet Gaynor in ''Sunrise'', Priscilla Dean in ''Outside the Law'' and ''The Dice Woman'' and Lillian Gish and Greta Garbo in most of their performances made restraint and easy naturalism in acting a virtue. Directors such as Albert Capellani (a French director who also did work in America directing Alla Nazimova films) and Maurice Tourneur insisted on naturalism in their films; Tourneur had been just such a minimalist in his prior stage productions. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927 films featuring expressionistic acting styles such as ''Metropolis'' were still being released. Some viewers liked the flamboyant acting for its escape value, and some countries were later than the United States in embracing naturalistic style in their films. In fact today the level of naturalism in acting varies from film to film and our favourites may not be the most naturalistic. Just as today, a film's success depended upon the setting, the mood, the script, the skills of the director, and the overall talent of the cast.

Projection speed

Until the standardization of the projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps) for sound films between 1926 and 1930, silent films were shot at variable speeds (or "frame rates") anywhere from 12 to 26 fps, depending on the year and studio. "Standard silent film speed" is often said to be 16 fps as a result of the Lumière brothers' Cinematographé, but industry practice varied considerably; there was no actual standard. Cameramen of the era insisted that their cranking technique was exactly 16 fps, but modern examination of the films shows this to be in error, that they often cranked faster. Unless carefully shown at their intended speeds silent films can appear unnaturally fast. However, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting to accelerate the action—particularly for comedies and action films.

Slow projection of a cellulose nitrate base film carried a risk of fire, as each frame was exposed for a longer time to the intense heat of the projection lamp; but there were other reasons to project a film at a greater pace. Often projectionists received general instructions from the distributors on the musical director's cue sheet as to how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected. In rare instances, usually for larger productions, cue sheets specifically for the projectionist provided a detailed guide to presenting the film. Theaters also—to maximize profit—sometimes varied projection speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film, and to fit a film into a prescribed time slot.

By using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the projected rate was multiplied two or three times higher than the number of film frames—each frame was flashed two or three times on screen. Early studies by Thomas Edison determined that any rate below 46 images per second "will strain the eye." A three-blade shutter projecting a 16 fps film would slightly surpass this mark, giving the audience 48 images per second. A 35 mm film frame rate of 24 fps translates to a film speed of per second. One reel requires 11 minutes and 7 seconds to be projected at 24 fps, while a 16 fps projection of the same reel would take 16 minutes and 40 seconds; per second.

In the 1950s, many telecine conversions of silent films at grossly incorrect frame rates for broadcast television may have alienated viewers. Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films; the 2002 restoration of ''Metropolis'' (Germany, 1927) may be the most fiercely debated example.

Tinting

With the lack of natural color processing available, films of the silent era were frequently dipped in dyestuffs and dyed various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Blue represented night scenes, yellow or amber meant day. Red represented fire and green represented a mysterious mood. Similarly, toning of film (such as the common silent film generalization of sepia-toning) with special solutions replaced the silver particles in the film stock with salts or dyes of various colors. A combination of tinting and toning could be used as an effect that could be striking.

Some films were hand-tinted, such as ''Annabelle Serpentine Dance'' (1894), from Edison Studios. In it, Annabelle Whitford, a young dancer from Broadway, is dressed in white veils that appear to change colors as she dances. Hand coloring was often used in the early "trick" and fantasy films of Europe, especially those by Georges Méliès.

By the beginning of the 1910s, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was used as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The director D. W. Griffith displayed a constant interest and concern about color, and used tinting as a special effect in many of his films. His 1915 epic, ''The Birth of a Nation'', used a number of colors, including amber, blue, lavender, and a striking red tint for scenes such as the "burning of Atlanta" and the ride of the Ku Klux Klan at the climax of the picture. Griffith later invented a color system in which colored lights flashed on areas of the screen to achieve a color effect.

Top grossing silent films in the United States

The following are the silent films that earned the highest ever gross income in film history, as calculated by ''Variety'' magazine in 1932. The dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation.

# ''The Birth of a Nation'' (1915) - $10,000,000 #''The Big Parade'' (1925) - $6,400,000 #''Ben-Hur'' (1925) - $5,500,000 #''Way Down East'' (1920) - $5,000,000 #''The Gold Rush'' (1925) - $4,250,000 #''The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse'' (1921) - $4,000,000 #''The Circus'' (1928) - $3,800,000 #''The Covered Wagon'' (1923) - $3,800,000 #''The Hunchback of Notre Dame'' (1923) - $3,500,000 #''The Ten Commandments'' (1923) - $3,400,000 #''Orphans of the Storm'' (1921) - $3,000,000 #''For Heaven's Sake'' (1926) - $2,600,000 #''Seventh Heaven'' (1926) - $2,400,000 #''Abie's Irish Rose'' (1928) - $1,500,000

During the sound era

Transition

Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, the technology became well-developed only in the early 1920s. The next few years saw a race to design, implement, and market several rival sound-on-disc and sound-on-film sound formats, such as Photokinema (1921), Phonofilm (1923), Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927), and RCA Photophone (1928).

Although the release of ''The Jazz Singer'' (1927) by Warner Brothers marked the first commercially successful sound film, silent films were the majority of features released in both 1927 and 1928, along with so-called goat-glanded films: silents with a section of sound film inserted. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929.

For a listing of notable silent era films, see ''list of years in film'' for the years between the beginning of film and 1928. The following list includes only films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent.

''Un Chien Andalou'', Salvador Dalí/Luis Buñuel, 1929

''City Girl'', F. W. Murnau, 1930

''Borderline'', Kenneth MacPherson, 1930

''Earth'', Aleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930

''City Lights'', Charlie Chaplin, 1931

''Tabu'', F. W. Murnau, Robert Flaherty, 1931

''I Was Born, But...'', Yasujiro Ozu, 1932

''A Story of Floating Weeds'', Yasujiro Ozu, 1934

''The Goddess'', Wu Yonggang, 1934

''Modern Times'', Charlie Chaplin, 1936

Later homages

Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including Jacques Tati with his ''Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot'' (1953) and Mel Brooks with ''Silent Movie'' (1976). Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's acclaimed drama ''Three Times'' (2005) is silent during its middle third, complete with intertitles; Stanley Tucci's ''The Impostors'' has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Brazilian filmmaker Renato Falcão's ''Margarette's Feast'' (2003) is silent. Writer / Director Michael Pleckaitis puts his own twist on the genre with ''Silent'' (2007). While not silent, the ''Mr. Bean'' TV show and movies have used the title character's non-talkative nature to create a similar style of humor.

The 1999 German film ''Tuvalu'' is mostly silent; the small amount of dialog is an odd mix of European languages, increasing the film's universality. Guy Maddin won awards for his homage to Soviet era silent films with his short ''The Heart of the World'' after which he made a feature-length silent, ''Brand Upon the Brain!'' (2006), incorporating live Foley artists, narration and orchestra at select showings. ''Shadow of the Vampire'' (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's classic silent vampire movie ''Nosferatu'' (1922). Werner Herzog honored the same film in his own version, ''Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht'' (1979).

Some films draw a direct contrast between the silent film era and the era of talkies. ''Sunset Boulevard'' shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of Norma Desmond, played by silent film star Gloria Swanson, and ''Singin' in the Rain'' deals with the period where the people of Hollywood had to face changing from making silents to talkies. Peter Bogdanovich's affectionate 1976 film ''Nickelodeon'' deals with the turmoil of silent filmmaking in Hollywood during the early 1910s, leading up to the release of D. W. Griffith's 1915 epic ''The Birth of a Nation''.

In 1999, the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki produced ''Juha,'' which captures the style of a silent film, using intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. In India, the 1988 film ''Pushpak'', starring Kamal Hassan, was a black comedy entirely devoid of dialog. The 2007 Australian film ''Dr Plonk'', was a silent comedy directed by Rolf de Heer. Stage plays have drawn upon silent film styles and sources. Actor/writers Billy Van Zandt & Jane Milmore staged their Off-Broadway slapstick comedy ''Silent Laughter'' as a live action tribute to the silent screen era. Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and starred in ''All Wear Bowlers'' (2004), which started as an homage to Laurel and Hardy then evolved to incorporate life-sized silent film sequences of Sobelle and Lyford who jump back and forth between live action and the silver screen. The 1940 animated film ''Fantasia'', which is eight different animation sequences set to music, can be considered a silent film, with only one short scene involving dialogue. The 1952 espionage film ''The Thief'' has music and sound effects, but no dialogue.

In 2005, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society produced a silent film version of Lovecraft's story ''The Call of Cthulhu.'' This film maintained a period-accurate filming style, and was received as both "the best HPL adaptation to date" and, referring to the decision to make it as a silent movie, "a brilliant conceit."

The 2011 French film ''The Artist'', directed by Michel Hazanavicius, plays as a silent film and is set in Hollywood during the silent era. It also includes segments of fictitious silent films starring its protagonists.

In 2011 American full length silent film "Death of the Sheik" (Silent Life), directed by Vlad Kozlov, is produced and will be premiered in late 2011 in Hollywood.

Early studios

The early studios were located in the New York City area. In December 1908, Edison led the formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers.[2] The "Edison Trust,” as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph, Essanay Studios, Kalem Company, George Kleine Productions, Lubin Studios, Georges Méliès, Pathé, Selig Studios, and Vitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution through the General Film Company. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915,[3] and were dissolved.[4] Edison Studios were first in West Orange, New Jersey (1892), they were moved to the Bronx, New York (1907). Fox (1909) and Biograph (1906) started in Manhattan, with studios in St George Staten Island. Others films were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The first westerns were filmed at Scott's Movie Ranch. Cowboys and Indians galloped across Fred Scott's movie ranch in South Beach, Staten Island), which had a frontier main street, a wide selection of stagecoaches and a 56-foot stockade. The island provided a serviceable stand-in for locations as varied as the Sahara desert and a British cricket pitch. War scenes were shot on the plains of Grasmere, Staten Island. ''The Perils of Pauline'' and its even more popular sequel ''The Exploits of Elaine'' were filmed largely on the island. So was the 1906 blockbuster ''Life of a Cowboy,'' by Edwin S. Porter. Companies and filming moved to the west coast around 1911.

Preservation and lost films

Many early motion pictures are lost because the nitrate film used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Additionally, many films were deliberately destroyed because they had little value in the era before home video. It has often been claimed that around 75% of silent films have been lost, though these estimates may be inaccurate due to a lack of numerical data. Major silent films presumed lost include ''Saved from the Titanic'' (1912); ''The Apostle'', the world's first animated feature film (1917); ''Cleopatra'' (1917); ''Arirang'' (1926); ''Gentlemen Prefer Blondes'' (1927); ''The Great Gatsby'' (1926); and ''London After Midnight'' (1927), and portions of Fritz Lang's ''Metropolis''. Though most lost silent films will never be recovered, some have been discovered in film archives or private collections.

In 1978 in Dawson City, Yukon, a bulldozer uncovered buried reels of nitrate film during excavation of a landfill. Dawson City was once the end of the distribution line for many films. The retired titles were stored at the local library until 1929 when the flammable nitrate was used as landfill in a condemned swimming pool. Stored for 50 years under the permafrost of the Yukon, the films turned out to be extremely well preserved. Included were films by Pearl White, Harold Lloyd, Douglas Fairbanks, and Lon Chaney. These films are now housed at the Library of Congress. The degradation of old film stock can be slowed through proper archiving, or films can be transferred to CD-ROM or other digital media for preservation. Silent film preservation has been a high priority among film historians.

See also

:Category:Silent films

:Category:Silent film actors

Classic Images

Laurel and Hardy films

List of film formats

German Expressionism

''Kammerspielfilm''

List of silent films released on 8 mm or Super 8 mm film

Lost films

Melodrama

Sound film

Sound stage

Tab show

At the Moving Picture Ball (Song about silent film stars)

References

Further reading

Davis, Lon. ''Silent Lives''. BearManor Media, Albany, 2008. ISBN 1-59393-124-7.

External links

Jeffrey Dym, Associate Professor of History, California State University, Sacramento. ''A Brief History of Benshi (Silent Film Narrators)''

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This is a list of people whose names in English are commonly appended with the phrase "''the Great''", or who were called that or an equivalent phrase in their own language. Other languages have their own suffixes such as ''e Bozorg'' and ''e azam'' in Persian and Urdu respectively.

In Persia, the title "the Great" at first seems to be a colloquial version of the Old Persian title "Great King". This title was first used by the conqueror Cyrus II of Persia.

The Persian title was inherited by Alexander III of Macedon (336–323 BC) when he conquered the Persian Empire, and the epithet "Great" eventually became personally associated with him. The first reference (in a comedy by Plautus) assumes that everyone knew who "Alexander the Great" was; however, there is no earlier evidence that Alexander III of Macedon was called "''the Great''".

The early Seleucid kings, who succeeded Alexander in Persia, used "Great King" in local documents, but the title was most notably used for Antiochus the Great (223–187 BC).

Later rulers and commanders began to use the epithet "the Great" as a personal name, like the Roman general Pompey. Others received the surname retrospectively, like the Carthaginian Hanno and the Indian emperor Ashoka the Great. Once the surname gained currency, it was also used as an honorific surname for people without political careers, like the philosopher Albert the Great.

As there are no objective criteria for "greatness", the persistence of later generations in using the designation greatly varies. For example, Louis XIV of France was often referred to as "The Great" in his lifetime but is rarely called such nowadays, while Frederick II of Prussia is still called "The Great". A later Hohenzollern - Wilhelm I - was often called "The Great" in the time of his grandson Wilhelm II, but rarely later.

Rulers

Abbas I of Persia (1571-1629), Shah of Iran

Akbar (1542-1605), ruler of the Mughal Empire of South Asia, mainly India

Alain I of Albret (1440-1522), French aristocrat

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), King of Macedonia, Persia, Greece, Egypt, and all of Mesopotamia

Alexander I of Georgia (1386–1446), King of Georgia

Alfonso III of León (c. 848-910), King of León, Galicia and Asturias

Alfred the Great (848/849-899), King of Wessex

Antiochus III the Great (c. 241–187 BC), ruler of the Seleucid Empire

Ashoka the Great (c. 304–232 BC), Indian emperor of the Maurya dynasty

Ashot I of Iberia “the Great”(died 826/830), presiding prince of Iberia (modern Georgia),

Askia Mohammad I (c. 1442–1538), ruler of the Songhai Empire

Bhumibol Adulyadej (born 1927), King of Thailand

Bolesław I Chrobry (967-1025), sometimes called "the Great", first King of Poland

Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the following section)

Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke (1736-1809), founder and ruler of the Rattanakosin Kingdom (in what is now Thailand)

Cnut the Great (c. 985 or 995-1035), King of Denmark, England, Norway and parts of Sweden

Casimir III the Great (1310-1370), King of Poland

Catherine the Great (1729-1796), Empress of Russian

Chandragupta II (reigned 375-413/415), also known as Vikramaditya, ruler of the Gupta empire in India

Charlemagne (died 814), King of the Franks and Emperor of the Romans

Chulalongkorn (1853-1910), King of Siam (now Thailand)

Chlothar II (584-629), King of Neustria and King of the Franks

Conrad, Margrave of Meissen (c. 1097-1157), Margrave of Meissen

Constantine I (c. 272-337), Roman Emperor

Cyrus the Great (c. 600 BC or 576 BC–530 BC), founder and ruler of the Persian or Achaemenid Empire

Darius the Great (550 – 486 BC), third ruler of the Persian Empire

Devapala (died 850), ruler of the Pala Empire in the Indian subcontinent

Dionysius I, Greek tyrant of Syracuse

Ferdinand I of León and Castile (c. 1015–1065), King of León and Count of Castile

Frederick the Great (1712-1786), King of Prussia

Genghis Khan (1162?-1227), founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire

Gero (c. 900–965), ruler of Marca Geronis, a very large march in Europe

Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (1594-1632), King of Sweden, founder of the Swedish Empire, and noted military leader

Gwanggaeto the Great, King of Goguryeo, one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea

Hanno the Great, the name of three leaders of Carthage, in the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd centuries BC

Henry I, Duke of Burgundy (946–1002)

Henry IV of France (1553-1610), King of France and King of Navarre

Herod the Great (73/74 BC-4 BC), King of Judea

Hugh the Great (898-956), Duke of the Franks and Count of Paris

Hugh Magnus of France (1007-1025), co-King of France

Hugh I, Count of Vermandois (1057-1101)

Humphrey I de Bohun (died c. 1123), Anglo-Norman aristocrat

Ivan III of Russia (1440-1505), Tsar of Russia

John I of Portugal (1358-1433), King of Portugal and the Algarve

John II of Aragon (1398-1479), King of Aragon and, through his wife, King of Navarre

Justinian I (483-565), Byzantine Emperor

Kamehameha I (c. 1758-1819), first King of Hawai'i

Kanishka (died c. 127), ruler of the Kushan Empire in Central Asia and parts of India

Kvirike III of Kakheti (1010-1029), King of Kakheti in eastern Georgia

Kublai Khan (1215-1294), Mongol ruler in the 13th century and Emperor of China; founder of the Yuan Dynasty

Llywelyn the Great (c. 1172–1240), Prince of Gwynedd and de facto ruler of most of Wales

Louis I of Hungary (1326-1382), King of Hungary, Croatia and Poland

Mangrai the Great (1238-1317), Lanna, northern Thailand

Emperor Meiji (1852-1912), Emperor of Japan

Mircea I of Wallachia (1355–1418)

Mithridates II of Parthia (died 88 BC), ruler of the Parthian Empire (in present day Iran)

Mithridates VI of Pontus (134 BC–63 BC), ruler of Pontus and the Bosporan Kingdom

Mstislav I of Kiev (1076-1132), Grand Prince of Kievan Rus

Narai (1633-1688), King of Ayutthaya (in what is now modern Thailand)

Naresuan (1555-1605), King of Ayutthaya

Odo the Great (died c. 735), Duke of Aquitaine

Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor (912-973)

K'inich Janaab' Pakal (603-683), ruler of the Mayan city-state of Palenque

Parakramabahu I of Polonnaruwa (1123–1186), King of Sri Lanka

Peter Krešimir IV of Croatia (died 1075), King of Croatia

Peter the Great (1672-1725), Tsar of Russia

Peter III of Aragon (1239-1285), King of Aragon and King of Sicily

Pompey (106 BC-48 BC), military and political leader of the late Roman Republic, rival of Julius Caesar

Radama I (1793–1828), first king of greater Madagascar

Raja Raja Chola I (c. 947-1014), Indian emperor of the Cholas.

Rajendra Chola I (reigned 1014-1044), Tamil King of India

Ramesses II (reigned 1279 BC – 1213 BC), considered the greatest pharaoh of Ancient Egypt

Ram Khamhaeng (around 1237 to 1247-1298), King of Sukhothai (in present day Thailand)

Ramon Berenguer III, Count of Barcelona (1082-1131), also Count of Provence and various other counties

Rhodri the Great (c. 820–878), King of Gwynedd (in present day Wales)

Roman the Great (after 1160-1205), Grand Prince of Kiev

Samudragupta (c. 335–375), ruler of the Gupta empire in the Indian subcontinent

Sancho III of Navarre (c. 992-1035), King of Kingdom of Navarre

Sargon of Akkad (died c. 2215 BC), ruler of the Akkadian Empire

Sejong the Great (1397-1450), Korean king

Shapur II (309-379), king of the Sassanid Empire, Persia

Simeon I of Bulgaria (864/865-927), ruler of the First Bulgarian Empire

Stephen III of Moldavia (1433-1504), Prince of Moldavia (Romania)

Stephen Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia (c. 1308-1355), King of Serbia and Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks

Taksin (1734-1782), King of the Thonburi Kingdom (Thailand)

Timur (1336-1405), better known as Tamerlane, founder of the Timurid Dynasty

Theobald II, Count of Champagne (1090–1151), Count of Blois and of Chartres as Theobald IV, Count of Champagne and of Brie

Theodoric the Great (454-526), King of the Ostrogoths, regent of the Visigoths and a viceroy of the Byzantine Empire

Theodosius I (347-395), Roman emperor

Tigranes the Great (140-55 BC), Emperor of Armenia

Tiridates III of Armenia (285-339), King of Armenia

Umar (c. 586 to 590–644), second caliph of the Muslim Empire

Valdemar I of Denmark (1131-1182), King of Denmark

Valentinian I (364-375), Roman Emperor

Vladimir I of Kiev (c. 958-1015), ruler of Kievan Rus

Vytautas (c. 1350-1430), archduke of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy

William I, Count of Burgundy (1020-1087), Count of Burgandy and Mâcon

William V, Duke of Aquitaine (969-1030), also Count of Poitou

Xerxes I (519-465 BC), King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire (Persia)

Yu the Great (c. 2200-2100 BC), legendary ruler in ancient China

Religious figures

Abraham the Great of Kashkar (ca. 492-586), monk and saint of the Assyrian Church of the East

Abraham Kidunaia (died c. 366, hermit, priest, and Christian saint of Mesopotamia

Albertus Magnus (1193/1206–1280), medieval German philosopher and theologian

Anthony the Great (c. 251–356), early Christian saint of Egypt

Babai the Great (c. 551–628), Assyrian church leader

Basil of Caesarea (330-379), Greek bishop and theologian

Bruno the Great (925–965), Archbishop of Cologne and Duke of Lotharingia (also listed in the previous section)

Euthymius the Great (377-473), abbot and Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox saint

Gertrude the Great (1256-c. 1302), German Benedictine, mystic, theologian and Roman Catholic saint

Pope Gregory I (c. 540-604)

Hiyya the Great, 3rd-century rabbi, Palestine

Pope John Paul II (1920-2005)

Pope Leo I (c. 391 or 400-461)

Macarius of Egypt (c. 300-391), Egyptian hermit

Pope Nicholas I (c. 800-867)

Photius I of Constantinople (c. 810–c. 893), Eastern Orthodox saint and Patriarch of Constantinople

William of Maleval (died 1157), founder of the Catholic congregation of Williamites

Other

Beli Mawr, a figure in medieval Welsh literature and genealogies

Emmy the Great, folk singer

Matteo Rosso the Great, Roman politician and father of Pope Nicholas III

Prokop the Great, Hussite general in Bohemia

See also

Epithet

List of monarchs by nickname

List of nicknames of European Royalty and Nobility: G-I

James, son of Zebedee, also known as James the Greater, one of the twelve apostles of Jesus

Ajax (mythology), called Ajax the Greater

Notes

Category:Monarchs Great, List of people known as The Category:Greatest Nationals Category:Epithets

bs:Spisak osoba znanih kao Veliki id:Daftar tokoh dengan gelar yang Agung jv:Daftar pamimpin ingkang dipun paringi julukan Ingkang Agung la:Magnus lt:Sąrašas:Žmonės, vadinami Didžiaisiais ja:称号に大が付く人物の一覧 ru:Великий (прозвище) sl:Seznam ljudi z vzdevkom Veliki sv:Lista över personer kallade den store th:รายพระนามกษัตริย์ที่ได้รับสมัญญานามมหาราช vi:Đại đế

"The Man" is a slang phrase that may refer to the government or to some other authority in a position of power. In addition to this derogatory connotation, it may also serve as a term of respect and praise. Also, " The Man is coming" is a term used to frighten small children who are misbehaving.

The phrase "the Man is keeping me down" is commonly used to describe oppression. The phrase "stick it to the Man" encourages resistance to authority, and essentially means "fight back" or "resist", either openly or via sabotage.

History

The term "the Man" in the American sense dates back to the late 19th Century. In the Southern U.S. states, the phrase came to be applied to any man or any group in a position of authority, or to authority in the abstract. From about the 1950s the phrase was also an underworld code word for police, the warden of a prison or other law enforcement or penal authorities.

It was also used as a term for a drug dealer in the 1950s and 1960s and can be seen in such media as Curtis Mayfield's "No Thing On Me"; Jonathan Larson's ''Rent'', William Burroughs's novel ''Naked Lunch'', and in the Velvet Underground song "I'm Waiting for the Man", in which Lou Reed sings about going to Uptown Manhattan, specifically Lexington Avenue and 125th Street, to buy heroin.

The use of this term was expanded to counterculture groups and their battles against authority, such as the Yippies, which, according to a May 19, 1969 article in ''U.S. News and World Report'', had the "avowed aim ... to destroy 'The Man', their term for the present system of government". The term eventually found its way into humorous usage, such as in a December 1979 motorcycle ad from the magazine ''Easyriders'' which featured the tagline, "California residents: Add 6% sales tax for The Man."

In present day, the phrase has been popularized in commercials and cinema.

Use as praise

The term has also been used as an approbation or form of praise. This may refer to the recipient's status as the leader or authority within a particular context, or it might be assumed to be a shortened form of a phrase like "He is the man (who is in charge)." One example of this usage dates to 1879 when Otto von Bismarck commented, referring to Benjamin Disraeli's pre-eminent position at the Congress of Berlin, "The old Jew, he is the man."

In more modern usage, it can be a superlative compliment ("you da man!") indicating that the subject is currently standing out amongst his peers even though they have no special designation or rank, such as a basketball player who is performing better than the other players on the court. It can also be used as a genuine compliment with an implied, slightly exaggerated or sarcastic tone, usually indicating that the person has indeed impressed the speaker but by doing something relatively trivial.

See also

Absentee landlord

Big Brother (Nineteen Eighty-Four)

New World Order (conspiracy theory)

Ruling class

The Establishment

Power elite

Corrections officer

YTMND

Notes

References

Lighter, J.E. (Ed.). (1997). ''Random House Dictionary of American Slang''. New York: Random House.

Category:Slang expressions Category:Stock characters Category:English idioms Category:Pejorative terms for people Category:Military-industrial complex

Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
name	Thomas Edison
birth name	Thomas Alva Edison
birth date	February 11, 1847
birth place	Milan, Ohio, United States
death date	October 18, 1931
death place	West Orange, New Jersey, USA
occupation	Inventor, scientist, businessman
spouse
religion	Deist
children	Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965)Thomas Alva Edison Jr. (1876–1935)William Leslie Edison (1878–1937)Madeleine Edison (1888–1979)Charles Edison (1890–1969)Theodore Miller Edison (1898–1992) | parents Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–1896)Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871)
relatives	Lewis Miller (father-in-law)
signature	Thomas Alva Edison Signature.svg
footnotes	}}

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor, scientist, and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Edison is the third most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications. These included a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures. His advanced work in these fields was an outgrowth of his early career as a telegraph operator. Edison originated the concept and implementation of electric-power generation and distribution to homes, businesses, and factories – a crucial development in the modern industrialized world. His first power station was on Manhattan Island, New York.

Early life

Thomas Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child of Samuel Ogden Edison, Jr. (1804–96, born in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, Canada) and Nancy Matthews Elliott (1810–1871, born in Chenango County, New York). His father had to escape from Canada because he took part in the unsuccessful Mackenzie Rebellion of 1837. Edison considered himself to be of Dutch ancestry.

In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered, and his teacher, the Reverend Engle, was overheard calling him "addled". This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. Edison recalled later, "My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint." His mother homeschooled him. Much of his education came from reading R.G. Parker's ''School of Natural Philosophy'' and The Cooper Union.

Edison developed hearing problems at an early age. The cause of his deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle-ear infections. Around the middle of his career Edison attributed the hearing impairment to being struck on the ears by a train conductor when his chemical laboratory in a boxcar caught fire and he was thrown off the train in Smiths Creek, Michigan, along with his apparatus and chemicals. In his later years he modified the story to say the injury occurred when the conductor, in helping him onto a moving train, lifted him by the ears.

Edison's family was forced to move to Port Huron, Michigan, when the railroad bypassed Milan in 1854, but his life there was bittersweet. He sold candy and newspapers on trains running from Port Huron to Detroit, and he sold vegetables to supplement his income. This began Edison's long streak of entrepreneurial ventures as he discovered his talents as a businessman. These talents eventually led him to found 14 companies, including General Electric, which is still in existence as one of the largest publicly traded companies in the world.

Telegrapher

Edison became a telegraph operator after he saved three-year-old Jimmie MacKenzie from being struck by a runaway train. Jimmie's father, station agent J.U. MacKenzie of Mount Clemens, Michigan, was so grateful that he trained Edison as a telegraph operator. Edison's first telegraphy job away from Port Huron was at Stratford Junction, Ontario, on the Grand Trunk Railway. In 1866, at the age of 19, Thomas Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, where, as an employee of Western Union, he worked the Associated Press bureau news wire. Edison requested the night shift, which allowed him plenty of time to spend at his two favorite pastimes—reading and experimenting. Eventually, the latter pre-occupation cost him his job. One night in 1867, he was working with a lead-acid battery when he spilled sulfuric acid onto the floor. It ran between the floorboards and onto his boss's desk below. The next morning Edison was fired.

One of his mentors during those early years was a fellow telegrapher and inventor named Franklin Leonard Pope, who allowed the impoverished youth to live and work in the basement of his Elizabeth, New Jersey home. Some of Edison's earliest inventions were related to telegraphy, including a stock ticker. His first patent was for the electric vote recorder, (U. S. Patent 90,646), which was granted on June 1, 1869.

Marriages and children

On December 25, 1871, Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, whom he had met two months earlier as she was an employee at one of his shops. They had three children: Marion Estelle Edison (1873–1965), nicknamed "Dot" Thomas Alva Edison, Jr. (1876–1935), nicknamed "Dash" William Leslie Edison (1878–1937) Inventor, graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale, 1900.

Mary Edison died on August 9, 1884, possibly from a brain tumor.

On February 24, 1886, at the age of thirty nine, Edison married 20-year-old Mina Miller in Akron, Ohio. She was the daughter of inventor Lewis Miller, co-founder of the Chautauqua Institution and a benefactor of Methodist charities. They also had three children: Madeleine Edison (1888–1979), who married John Eyre Sloane. Charles Edison (1890–1969), who took over the company upon his father's death and who later was elected Governor of New Jersey. He also took charge of his father's experimental laboratories in West Orange.

Theodore Edison (1898–1992), (MIT Physics 1923), had over 80 patents to his credit.

Mina outlived Thomas Edison, dying on August 24, 1947.

Beginning his career

Thomas Edison began his career as an inventor in Newark, New Jersey, with the automatic repeater and his other improved telegraphic devices, but the invention which first gained him notice was the phonograph in 1877. This accomplishment was so unexpected by the public at large as to appear almost magical. Edison became known as "The Wizard of Menlo Park," New Jersey. His first phonograph recorded on tinfoil around a grooved cylinder, but had poor sound quality and the recordings could only be played a few times. In the 1880s, a redesigned model using wax-coated cardboard cylinders was produced by Alexander Graham Bell, Chichester Bell, and Charles Tainter. This was one reason that Thomas Edison continued work on his own "Perfected Phonograph."

Menlo Park (1876–1881)

Edison's major innovation was the first industrial research lab, which was built in Menlo Park, New Jersey. It was built with the funds from the sale of Edison's quadruplex telegraph. After his demonstration of the telegraph, Edison was not sure that his original plan to sell it for $4,000 to $5,000 was right, so he asked Western Union to make a bid. He was surprised to hear them offer $10,000, which he gratefully accepted. The quadruplex telegraph was Edison's first big financial success, and Menlo Park became the first institution set up with the specific purpose of producing constant technological innovation and improvement. Edison was legally attributed with most of the inventions produced there, though many employees carried out research and development under his direction. His staff was generally told to carry out his directions in conducting research, and he drove them hard to produce results.

William J. Hammer, a consulting electrical engineer, began his duties as a laboratory assistant to Edison in December 1879. He assisted in experiments on the telephone, phonograph, electric railway, iron ore separator, electric lighting, and other developing inventions. However, Hammer worked primarily on the incandescent electric lamp and was put in charge of tests and records on that device. In 1880, he was appointed chief engineer of the Edison Lamp Works. In his first year, the plant under General Manager Francis Robbins Upton turned out 50,000 lamps. According to Edison, Hammer was "a pioneer of incandescent electric lighting".

Nearly all of Edison's patents were utility patents, which were protected for a 17-year period and included inventions or processes that are electrical, mechanical, or chemical in nature. About a dozen were design patents, which protect an ornamental design for up to a 14-year period. As in most patents, the inventions he described were improvements over prior art. The phonograph patent, in contrast, was unprecedented as describing the first device to record and reproduce sounds. Edison did not invent the first electric light bulb, but instead invented the first commercially practical incandescent light. Many earlier inventors had previously devised incandescent lamps including Henry Woodward, and Mathew Evans. Others who developed early and not commercially practical incandescent electric lamps included Humphry Davy, James Bowman Lindsay, Moses G. Farmer, William E. Sawyer, Joseph Swan and Heinrich Göbel. Some of these early bulbs had such flaws as an extremely short life, high expense to produce, and high electric current drawn, making them difficult to apply on a large scale commercially. In 1878, Edison applied the term ''filament'' to the element of glowing wire carrying the current, although the English inventor Joseph Swan had used the term prior to this. Swan developed an incandescent light with a long lasting filament at about the same time as Edison, as Swan's earlier bulbs lacked the high resistance needed to be an effective part of an electrical utility. Edison and his co-workers set about the task of creating longer-lasting bulbs. In Britain, Joseph Swan had been able to obtain a patent on the incandescent lamp because although he had been making successful lamps some time before Edison was tardy in applying for patents so application was submitted by Edison but failed due to an oversight in the drafting of Edison's patent application. Unable to raise the required capital in Britain because of this, Edison was forced to enter into a joint venture with Swan (known as Ediswan). Swan acknowledged that Edison had anticipated him, saying "Edison is entitled to more than I ... he has seen further into this subject, vastly than I, and foreseen and provided for details that I did not comprehend until I saw his system". By 1879, Edison had produced a new concept: a high resistance lamp in a very high vacuum, which would burn for hundreds of hours. While the earlier inventors had produced electric lighting in laboratory conditions, dating back to a demonstration of a glowing wire by Alessandro Volta in 1800, Edison concentrated on commercial application, and was able to sell the concept to homes and businesses by mass-producing relatively long-lasting light bulbs and creating a complete system for the generation and distribution of electricity.

In just over a decade Edison's Menlo Park laboratory had expanded to occupy two city blocks. Edison said he wanted the lab to have "a stock of almost every conceivable material". A newspaper article printed in 1887 reveals the seriousness of his claim, stating the lab contained "eight thousand kinds of chemicals, every kind of screw made, every size of needle, every kind of cord or wire, hair of humans, horses, hogs, cows, rabbits, goats, minx, camels ... silk in every texture, cocoons, various kinds of hoofs, shark's teeth, deer horns, tortoise shell ... cork, resin, varnish and oil, ostrich feathers, a peacock's tail, jet, amber, rubber, all ores ..." and the list goes on.

Over his desk, Edison displayed a placard with Sir Joshua Reynolds' famous quotation: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." This slogan was reputedly posted at several other locations throughout the facility.

With Menlo Park, Edison had created the first industrial laboratory concerned with creating knowledge and then controlling its application.

Carbon telephone transmitter

In 1877–78, Edison invented and developed the carbon microphone used in all telephones along with the Bell receiver until the 1980s. After protracted patent litigation, in 1892 a federal court ruled that Edison—and not Emile Berliner—was the inventor of the carbon microphone. The carbon microphone was also used in radio broadcasting and public address work through the 1920s.

Electric light

Building on the contributions of other developers over the previous three quarters of a century, Edison made significant improvements to the idea of incandescent light, and wound up in the public consciousness as "the inventor" of the lightbulb, and a prime mover in developing the necessary infrastructure for electric power.

After many experiments with platinum and other metal filaments, Edison returned to a carbon filament. The first successful test was on October 22, 1879; it lasted 40 hours. Edison continued to improve this design and by November 4, 1879, filed for U.S. patent 223,898 (granted on January 27, 1880) for an electric lamp using "a carbon filament or strip coiled and connected to platina contact wires". Although the patent described several ways of creating the carbon filament including "cotton and linen thread, wood splints, papers coiled in various ways", it was not until several months after the patent was granted that Edison and his team discovered a carbonized bamboo filament that could last over 1,200 hours. The idea of using this particular raw material originated from Edison's recalling his examination of a few threads from a bamboo fishing pole while relaxing on the shore of Battle Lake in the present-day state of Wyoming, where he and other members of a scientific team had traveled so that they could clearly observe a total eclipse of the sun on July 29, 1878, from the Continental Divide.

In 1878, Edison formed the Edison Electric Light Company in New York City with several financiers, including J. P. Morgan and the members of the Vanderbilt family. Edison made the first public demonstration of his incandescent light bulb on December 31, 1879, in Menlo Park. It was during this time that he said: "We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles."

Lewis Latimer joined the Edison Electric Light Company in 1884. Latimer had received a patent in January 1881 for the "Process of Manufacturing Carbons", an improved method for the production of carbon filaments for lightbulbs. Latimer worked as an engineer, a draftsman and an expert witness in patent litigation on electric lights.

George Westinghouse's company bought Philip Diehl's competing induction lamp patent rights (1882) for $25,000, forcing the holders of the Edison patent to charge a more reasonable rate for the use of the Edison patent rights and lowering the price of the electric lamp.

On October 8, 1883, the US patent office ruled that Edison's patent was based on the work of William Sawyer and was therefore invalid. Litigation continued for nearly six years, until October 6, 1889, when a judge ruled that Edison's electric light improvement claim for "a filament of carbon of high resistance" was valid. To avoid a possible court battle with Joseph Swan, whose British patent had been awarded a year before Edison's, he and Swan formed a joint company called Ediswan to manufacture and market the invention in Britain.

Mahen Theatre in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, was the first public building in the world to use Edison's electric lamps, with the installation supervised by Edison's assistant in the invention of the lamp, Francis Jehl. In September 2010, a sculpture of three giant light bulbs was erected in Brno, in front of the theatre.

Electric power distribution

Edison patented a system for electricity distribution in 1880, which was essential to capitalize on the invention of the electric lamp. On December 17, 1880, Edison founded the Edison Illuminating Company. The company established the first investor-owned electric utility in 1882 on Pearl Street Station, New York City. It was on September 4, 1882, that Edison switched on his Pearl Street generating station's electrical power distribution system, which provided 110 volts direct current (DC) to 59 customers in lower Manhattan.

Earlier in the year, in January 1882 he had switched on the first steam generating power station at Holborn Viaduct in London. The DC supply system provided electricity supplies to street lamps and several private dwellings within a short distance of the station. On January 19, 1883, the first standardized incandescent electric lighting system employing overhead wires began service in Roselle, New Jersey.

War of currents

Edison's true success, like that of his friend Henry Ford, was in his ability to maximize profits through establishment of mass-production systems and intellectual property rights. George Westinghouse and Edison became adversaries because of Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution instead of the more easily transmitted alternating current (AC) system invented by Nikola Tesla and promoted by Westinghouse. Unlike DC, AC could be stepped up to very high voltages with transformers, sent over thinner and cheaper wires, and stepped down again at the destination for distribution to users.

In 1887 there were 121 Edison power stations in the United States delivering DC electricity to customers. When the limitations of DC were discussed by the public, Edison launched a propaganda campaign to convince people that AC was far too dangerous to use. The problem with DC was that the power plants could economically deliver DC electricity only to customers within about one and a half miles (about 2.4 km) from the generating station, so that it was suitable only for central business districts. When George Westinghouse suggested using high-voltage AC instead, as it could carry electricity hundreds of miles with marginal loss of power, Edison waged a "War of Currents" to prevent AC from being adopted.

The war against AC led him to become involved in the development and promotion of the electric chair (using AC) as an attempt to portray AC to have greater lethal potential than DC. Edison went on to carry out a brief but intense campaign to ban the use of AC or to limit the allowable voltage for safety purposes. As part of this campaign, Edison's employees publicly electrocuted animals to demonstrate the dangers of AC; alternating electric currents are slightly more dangerous in that frequencies near 60 Hz have a markedly greater potential for inducing fatal "cardiac fibrillation" than do direct currents. On one of the more notable occasions, in 1903, Edison's workers electrocuted Topsy the elephant at Luna Park, near Coney Island, after she had killed several men and her owners wanted her put to death. His company filmed the electrocution.

AC replaced DC in most instances of generation and power distribution, enormously extending the range and improving the efficiency of power distribution. Though widespread use of DC ultimately lost favor for distribution, it exists today primarily in long-distance high-voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission systems. Low voltage DC distribution continued to be used in high-density downtown areas for many years but was eventually replaced by AC low-voltage network distribution in many of them. DC had the advantage that large battery banks could maintain continuous power through brief interruptions of the electric supply from generators and the transmission system. Utilities such as Commonwealth Edison in Chicago had rotary converters or motor-generator sets, which could change DC to AC and AC to various frequencies in the early to mid-20th century. Utilities supplied rectifiers to convert the low voltage AC to DC for such DC loads as elevators, fans and pumps. There were still 1,600 DC customers in downtown New York City as of 2005, and service was finally discontinued only on November 14, 2007. Most subway systems still are powered by direct current.

Fluoroscopy

Edison is credited with designing and producing the first commercially available fluoroscope, a machine that uses X-rays to take radiographs. Until Edison discovered that calcium tungstate fluoroscopy screens produced brighter images than the barium platinocyanide screens originally used by Wilhelm Röntgen, the technology was capable of producing only very faint images. The fundamental design of Edison's fluoroscope is still in use today, despite the fact that Edison himself abandoned the project after nearly losing his own eyesight and seriously injuring his assistant, Clarence Dally. Dally had made himself an enthusiastic human guinea pig for the fluoroscopy project and in the process been exposed to a poisonous dose of radiation. He later died of injuries related to the exposure. In 1903, a shaken Edison said "Don't talk to me about X-rays, I am afraid of them."

Work relations

Frank J. Sprague, a competent mathematician and former naval officer, was recruited by Edward H. Johnson and joined the Edison organization in 1883. One of Sprague's significant contributions to the Edison Laboratory at Menlo Park was to expand Edison's mathematical methods. Despite the common belief that Edison did not use mathematics, analysis of his notebooks reveal that he was an astute user of mathematical analysis conducted by his assistants such as Francis Robbins Upton, for example, determining the critical parameters of his electric lighting system including lamp resistance by a sophisticated analysis of Ohm's Law, Joule's Law and economics.

Another of Edison's assistants was Nikola Tesla. Tesla claimed that Edison promised him $50,000 if he succeeded in making improvements to his DC generation plants. Several months later, when Tesla had finished the work and asked to be paid, he said that Edison replied, "When you become a full-fledged American you will appreciate an American joke." Tesla immediately resigned. With Tesla's salary of $18 per week, the payment would have amounted to over 53 years' pay and the amount was equal to the initial capital of the company. Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to $25 per week. Although Tesla accepted an Edison Medal later in life, this and other negative series of events concerning Edison remained with Tesla. The day after Edison died, the ''New York Times'' contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla who was quoted as saying:

One of Edison's famous quotations regarding his attempts to make the light globe suggest that perhaps Tesla was right about Edison's methods of working: "If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."

When Edison was a very old man and close to death, he said, in looking back, that the biggest mistake he had made was that he never respected Tesla or his work.

There were 28 men recognized as Edison Pioneers.

Media inventions

The key to Edison's fortunes was telegraphy. With knowledge gained from years of working as a telegraph operator, he learned the basics of electricity. This allowed him to make his early fortune with the stock ticker, the first electricity-based broadcast system. Edison patented the sound recording and reproducing phonograph in 1878. Edison was also granted a patent for the motion picture camera or "Kinetograph". He did the electromechanical design, while his employee W.K.L. Dickson, a photographer, worked on the photographic and optical development. Much of the credit for the invention belongs to Dickson. In 1891, Thomas Edison built a Kinetoscope, or peep-hole viewer. This device was installed in penny arcades, where people could watch short, simple films. The kinetograph and kinetoscope were both first publicly exhibited May 20, 1891.

On August 9, 1892, Edison received a patent for a two-way telegraph. In April 1896, Thomas Armat's Vitascope, manufactured by the Edison factory and marketed in Edison's name, was used to project motion pictures in public screenings in New York City. Later he exhibited motion pictures with voice soundtrack on cylinder recordings, mechanically synchronized with the film.

Officially the kinetoscope entered Europe when the rich American Businessman Irving T. Bush (1869–1948) bought from the Continental Commerce Company of Franck Z. Maguire and Joseph D. Bachus a dozen machines. Bush placed from October 17, 1894, the first kinetoscopes in London. At the same time the French company Kinétoscope Edison Michel et Alexis Werner bought these machines for the market in France. In the last three months of 1894 The Continental Commerce Company sold hundreds of kinetoscopes in Europe (i.e. the Netherlands and Italy). In Germany and in Austria-Hungary the kinetoscope was introduced by the Deutsche-österreichische-Edison-Kinetoscop Gesellschaft, founded by the Ludwig Stollwerck of the Schokoladen-Süsswarenfabrik Stollwerck & Co of Cologne. The first kinetoscopes arrived in Belgium at the Fairs in early 1895. The Edison's Kinétoscope Français, a Belgian company, was founded in Brussels on January 15, 1895, with the rights to sell the kinetoscopes in Monaco, France and the French colonies. The main investors in this company were Belgian industrialists. On May 14, 1895, the Edison's Kinétoscope Belge was founded in Brussels. The businessman Ladislas-Victor Lewitzki, living in London but active in Belgium and France, took the initiative in starting this business. He had contacts with Leon Gaumont and the American Mutoscope and Biograph Co. In 1898 he also became a shareholder of the Biograph and Mutoscope Company for France.

In 1901, he visited the Sudbury area in Ontario, Canada, as a mining prospector, and is credited with the original discovery of the Falconbridge ore body. His attempts to actually mine the ore body were not successful, however, and he abandoned his mining claim in 1903. A street in Falconbridge, as well as the Edison Building, which served as the head office of Falconbridge Mines, are named for him.

In 1902, agents of Thomas Edison bribed a theater owner in London for a copy of ''A Trip to the Moon'' by Georges Méliès. Edison then made hundreds of copies and showed them in New York City. Méliès received no compensation. He was counting on taking the film to the US and recapture its huge cost by showing it throughout the country when he realized it had already been shown there by Edison. This effectively bankrupted Méliès. Other exhibitors similarly routinely copied and exhibited each others films. To better protect the copyrights on his films, Edison deposited prints of them on long strips of photographic paper with the U.S. copyright office. Many of these paper prints survived longer and in better condition than the actual films of that era.

Edison's favorite movie was ''The Birth of a Nation''. He thought that talkies had "spoiled everything" for him. "There isn't any good acting on the screen. They concentrate on the voice now and have forgotten how to act. I can sense it more than you because I am deaf." His favorite stars were Mary Pickford and Clara Bow.

In 1908, Edison started the Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a conglomerate of nine major film studios (commonly known as the Edison Trust). Thomas Edison was the first honorary fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929.

West Orange and Fort Myers (1886–1931)

Edison moved from Menlo Park after the death of Mary Stilwell and purchased a home known as "Glenmont" in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. In 1885, Thomas Edison bought property in Fort Myers, Florida, and built what was later called Seminole Lodge as a winter retreat. Edison and his wife Mina spent many winters in Fort Myers where they recreated and Edison tried to find a domestic source of natural rubber.

Henry Ford, the automobile magnate, later lived a few hundred feet away from Edison at his winter retreat in Fort Myers, Florida. Edison even contributed technology to the automobile. They were friends until Edison's death.

In 1928, Edison joined the Fort Myers Civitan Club. He believed strongly in the organization, writing that "The Civitan Club is doing things —big things— for the community, state, and nation, and I certainly consider it an honor to be numbered in its ranks." He was an active member in the club until his death, sometimes bringing Henry Ford to the club's meetings.

The final years

Edison was active in business right up to the end. Just months before his death in 1931, the Lackawanna Railroad implemented electric trains in suburban service from Hoboken to Gladstone, Montclair and Dover in New Jersey. Transmission was by means of an overhead catenary system, with the entire project under Edison's guidance. To the surprise of many, he was at the throttle of the very first MU (Multiple-Unit) train to depart Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, driving the train all the way to Dover. As another tribute to his lasting legacy, the same fleet of cars Edison deployed on the Lackawanna in 1931 served commuters until their retirement in 1984, when some of them were purchased by the Berkshire Scenic Railway Museum in Lenox, Massachusetts. A special plaque commemorating the joint achievement of both the railway and Edison can be seen today in the waiting room of Lackawanna Terminal in Hoboken, presently operated by New Jersey Transit.

Edison was said to have been influenced by a popular fad diet in his last few years; "the only liquid he consumed was a pint of milk every three hours". He is reported to have believed this diet would restore his health. However, this tale is doubtful. In 1930, the year before Edison died, Mina said in an interview about him that "Correct eating is one of his greatest hobbies." She also said that during one of his periodic "great scientific adventures", Edison would be up at 7:00, have breakfast at 8:00, and be rarely home for lunch or dinner, implying that he continued to have all three.

Edison became the owner of his Milan, Ohio, birthplace in 1906. On his last visit, in 1923, he was shocked to find his old home still lit by lamps and candles.

Thomas Edison died of complications of diabetes on October 18, 1931, in his home, "Glenmont" in Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, which he had purchased in 1886 as a wedding gift for Mina. He is buried behind the home.

Edison's last breath is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum. Ford reportedly convinced Charles Edison to seal a test tube of air in the inventor's room shortly after his death, as a memento. A plaster death mask was also made.

Mina died in 1947.

Views on politics, religion and metaphysics

Historian Paul Israel has characterized Edison as a "freethinker". Edison was heavily influenced by Thomas Paine's ''The Age of Reason''. Edison defended Paine's "scientific deism", saying, "He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity." In an October 2, 1910, interview in the ''New York Times Magazine,'' Edison stated:

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions.

Edison was called an atheist for those remarks, and although he did not allow himself to be drawn into the controversy publicly, he clarified himself in a private letter: "You have misunderstood the whole article, because you jumped to the conclusion that it denies the existence of God. There is no such denial, what you call God I call Nature, the Supreme intelligence that rules matter. All the article states is that it is doubtful in my opinion if our intelligence or soul or whatever one may call it lives hereafter as an entity or disperses back again from whence it came, scattered amongst the cells of which we are made."

Nonviolence was key to Edison's moral views, and when asked to serve as a naval consultant for World War I, he specified he would work only on defensive weapons and later noted, "I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill." Edison's philosophy of nonviolence extended to animals as well, about which he stated: "Nonviolence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." However, he is also notorious for having electrocuted a number of dogs in 1888, both by direct and alternating current, in an attempt to argue that the former (which he had a vested business interest in promoting) was safer than the latter (favored by his rival George Westinghouse). Edison's success in promoting direct current as less lethal also led to alternating current being used in the electric chair adopted by New York in 1889 as a supposedly humane execution method; because Westinghouse was angered by the decision, he funded Eighth Amendment-based appeals for inmates set to die in the electric chair, ultimately resulting in Edison providing the generators which powered early electrocutions and testifying successfully on behalf of the state that electrocution was a painless method of execution.

Tributes

Places named for Edison

Several places have been named after Edison, most notably the town of Edison, New Jersey. Thomas Edison State College, a nationally known college for adult learners, is in Trenton, New Jersey. Two community colleges are named for him: Edison State College in Fort Myers, Florida, and Edison Community College in Piqua, Ohio. There are numerous high schools named after Edison; see Edison High School.

The City Hotel, in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, was the first building to be lit with Edison's three-wire system. The hotel was re-named The Hotel Edison, and retains that name today.

Three bridges around the United States have been named in his honor (see Edison Bridge).

In space, his name is commemorated in asteroid 742 Edisona.

Museums and memorials

In West Orange, New Jersey, the 13.5 acre (5.5 ha) Glenmont estate is maintained and operated by the National Park Service as the Edison National Historic Site. The Thomas Alva Edison Memorial Tower and Museum is in the town of Edison, New Jersey. In Beaumont, Texas, there is an Edison Museum, though Edison never visited there. The Port Huron Museum, in Port Huron, Michigan, restored the original depot that Thomas Edison worked out of as a young newsbutcher. The depot has been named the Thomas Edison Depot Museum. The town has many Edison historical landmarks, including the graves of Edison's parents, and a monument along the St. Clair River. Edison's influence can be seen throughout this city of 32,000. In Detroit, the Edison Memorial Fountain in Grand Circus Park was created to honor his achievements. The limestone fountain was dedicated October 21, 1929, the fiftieth anniversary of the creation of the lightbulb. On the same night, The Edison Institute was dedicated in nearby Dearborn.

In early 2010, Edison was proposed by the Ohio Historical Society as a finalist in a statewide vote for inclusion in Statuary Hall at the United States Capitol.

Companies bearing Edison's name

Edison General Electric, merged with Thomson-Houston Electric Company to form General Electric

Commonwealth Edison, now part of Exelon

Consolidated Edison

Edison International

* Southern California Edison

* Edison Mission Energy

* Edison Capital

Detroit Edison, a unit of DTE Energy

Edison Sault Electric Company, a unit of Wisconsin Energy Corporation

FirstEnergy

* Metropolitan Edison

* Ohio Edison

* Toledo Edison

Edison S.p.A., a unit of Italenergia

Boston Edison, a unit of NSTAR, formerly known as the Edison Electric Illuminating Company

WEEI radio station in Boston, established by the Edison Electric Illuminating Company (hence the call letters)

Trade association the Edison Electric Institute, a lobbying and research group for investor-owned utilities in the United States

Awards named in honor of Edison

The Edison Medal was created on February 11, 1904, by a group of Edison's friends and associates. Four years later the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), later IEEE, entered into an agreement with the group to present the medal as its highest award. The first medal was presented in 1909 to Elihu Thomson and, in a twist of fate, was awarded to Nikola Tesla in 1917. It is the oldest award in the area of electrical and electronics engineering, and is presented annually "for a career of meritorious achievement in electrical science, electrical engineering or the electrical arts."

In the Netherlands, the major music awards are named the Edison Award after him.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers concedes the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award to individual patents since 2000.

Honors and awards given to Edison

The President of the Third French Republic, Jules Grévy, on the recommendation of his Minister of Foreign Affairs Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire and with the presentations of the Minister of Posts and Telegraphs Louis Cochery, designated Edison with the ''distinction'' of an'' 'Officer of the Legion of Honour' ''(Légion d'honneur) by decree on November 10, 1881;

In 1983, the United States Congress, pursuant to Senate Joint Resolution 140 (Public Law 97—198), designated February 11, Edison's birthday, as National Inventor's Day.

In 1887, Edison won the Matteucci Medal. In 1890, he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

In 1889, Edison was awarded the John Scott Medal.

In 1899, Edison was awarded the Edward Longstreth Medal.

Edison was awarded Franklin Medal of The Franklin Institute in 1915 for discoveries contributing to the foundation of industries and the well-being of the human race.

Edison was ranked thirty-fifth on Michael H. Hart's 1978 book ''The 100'', a list of the most influential figures in history. ''Life'' magazine (USA), in a special double issue in 1997, placed Edison first in the list of the "100 Most Important People in the Last 1000 Years", noting that the light bulb he promoted "lit up the world". In the 2005 television series ''The Greatest American'', he was voted by viewers as the fifteenth-greatest.

In 2008, Edison was inducted in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Other items named after Edison

The United States Navy named the USS Edison (DD-439), a Gleaves class destroyer, in his honor in 1940. The ship was decommissioned a few months after the end of World War II. In 1962, the Navy commissioned USS Thomas A. Edison (SSBN-610), a fleet ballistic missile nuclear-powered submarine. Decommissioned on December 1, 1983, ''Thomas A. Edison'' was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on April 30, 1986. She went through the Navy's Nuclear Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Bremerton, Washington, beginning on October 1, 1996. When she finished the program on December 1, 1997, she ceased to exist as a complete ship and was listed as scrapped.

In popular culture

Thomas Edison has appeared in popular culture as a character in novels, films, comics and video games. His prolific inventing helped make him an icon and he has made appearances in popular culture during his lifetime down to the present day. His history with Nikola Tesla has also provided dramatic tension and is a theme returned to numerous times.

On February 11, 2011, on Thomas Edison's 164th birthday, Google's homepage featured an animated Google Doodle commemorating his many inventions. When the cursor was hovered over the doodle, a series of mechanisms seemed to move, causing a lightbulb to glow.

See also

Animated Hero Classics – Animated DVD biography series of historical figures, including Thomas Edison

John I. Beggs

List of Edison patents

List of people on stamps of Ireland

Thomas Alva Edison Birthplace

USS Edison (DD-439)

Thomas E. Murray

Thomas Edison National Historical Park

Phonomotor

References

Bibliography

External links

;Locations

Menlo Park Museum and Edison Memorial Tower

Thomas Edison National Historical Park (National Park Service)

Edison exhibit and Menlo Park Laboratory at Henry Ford Museum

Edison Museum

Edison Depot Museum

Edison Birthplace Museum

Thomas Edison House

;Information and media

Major Inventions And Events In The Life Of Thomas Edison

The Diary of Thomas Edison

Edison's patent application for the light bulb at the National Archives.

Jan. 4, 1903: Edison Fries an Elephant to Prove His Point – Wired Magazine article about Edison's "macabre form of a series of animal electrocutions using AC."

''The Invention Factory: Thomas Edison's Laboratories''

Rutgers: Edison Papers

Edisonian Museum Antique Electrics

"Edison's Miracle of Light"

Edison Innovation Foundation – Non-profit foundation supporting the legacy of Thomas Edison.

The Illustrious Vagabonds

"The World's Greatest Inventor", October 1931, Popular Mechanics detailed, illustrated article

14 minutes "instructional" film with fictional elements The boyhood of Thomas Edison from 1964, produced by Coronet, published by ''archive.org''

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Category:1847 births Category:1931 deaths Category:American inventors Category:American people of Canadian descent Category:American people of Dutch descent Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of Scottish descent Category:American scientists Category:Articles containing video clips Category:Cinema pioneers Category:Congressional Gold Medal recipients Category:Deaf people Category:Edison family Category:Deists Category:Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Category:National Inventors Hall of Fame inductees Category:Officiers of the Légion d'honneur Category:People associated with electricity Category:People from Erie County, Ohio Category:People of United Empire Loyalist descent Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) Category:Telegraphy

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Coordinates	41°52′55″N87°37′40″N
Name	Georges Méliès
Birth name	Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès
Birth date	December 08, 1861
Birth place	Paris, France
Death date	January 21, 1938
Death place	Paris, France
Years active	1896–1914
Occupation	Filmmaker, Illusionist, Toymaker
Spouse	Jeanne d'Alcy (1926-1938) }}

Georges Méliès (December 8, 1861 – January 21, 1938), full name Marie-Georges-Jean Méliès, was a French filmmaker famous for leading many technical and narrative developments in the earliest cinema. He was very innovative in the use of special effects. He accidentally discovered the stop trick, or substitution, in 1896, and was one of the first filmmakers to use multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color in his films. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality through cinematography, Méliès is sometimes referred to as the First "Cinemagician."

Biography

Méliès was born in Paris, where his family manufactured shoes. He had two older brothers, Henri and Gaston. Before making films, he was a stage magician at the Theatre Robert-Houdin.

In 1895, he became interested in film after seeing a demonstration of the Lumière brothers' camera. In 1897, he established a studio on a rooftop property in Montreuil. Actors performed in front of a painted set as inspired by the conventions of magic and musical theater. He directed 531 films between 1896 and 1914, ranging in length from one to forty minutes. In subject matter, these films are often similar to the magic theater shows that Méliès had been doing, containing "tricks" and impossible events, such as objects disappearing or changing size. These early special effects films were essentially devoid of plot. The special effects were used only to show what was possible, rather than enhance the overall film.

Melies early films were mostly composed of single in-camera effects, used for the entirety of the film. For example, after experimenting with multiple exposure, Melies created his film ''The One Man Band'' in which he played seven different characters simultaneously.

His most famous film is ''A Trip to the Moon'' (''Le voyage dans la Lune'') made in 1902, which includes the celebrated scene in which a spaceship hits the eye of the man in the moon. Also famous is ''The Impossible Voyage'' (''Le voyage à travers l'impossible'') from 1904. Both of these films are about strange voyages, somewhat in the style of Jules Verne. These are considered to be some of the most important early science fiction films, although their approach is closer to fantasy. In addition, horror cinema can be traced back to Georges Méliès's ''Le Manoir du diable'' (1896). A print of the film was acquired by Thomas Edison, who then duplicated and distributed it in the United States, where it achieved financial success; however, Edison did not pay any revenues to Méliès.

In 1913 Georges Méliès' film company was forced into bankruptcy by the large French and American studios, and his company was bought out of receivership by Pathé Frères. Méliès did not grasp the value of his films, and with some 500 films recorded on cellulose, the French Army seized most of this stock to be melted down into boot heels during World War I. Many of the other films were sold to be recycled into new film. As a result many of his films do not exist today.

After being driven out of business, Méliès became a toy salesman at the Montparnasse station, with the assistance of funds collected by other filmmakers. In 1932 the Cinema Society gave Méliès a home in Château d'Orly. Georges Méliès was also awarded the Légion d'honneur (Legion of honor), which was presented to him by Louis Lumière.

Méliès died in Paris and was buried in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.

His 1899 short film ''Cleopatra'' was believed to be a lost film until a copy was discovered in 2005 in Paris.

Filmography

name	Georges Méliès film Conquest of the Pole

Georges Méliès directed hundreds of films including the following. For a full filmography see Georges Méliès filmography.

''The Bewitched House'' (1896)

''Batteuse à vapeur'' (1896)

''Bébé et fillettes'' (1896)

''Le Bivouac'' (1896)

''The Vanishing Lady'' / ''Escamotage d'une dame chez Robert-Houdin'' (1896)

''The House of the Devil'' / ''Le Manoir du Diable'' (1896)

''Boulevard des Italiens'' (1896)

''Cléopâtre'' (1899)

''Cinderella'' / ''Cendrillon'' (1899)

''The Dreyfus Affair'' / ''L'affaire Dreyfus'' (1899)

''Jeanne d'Arc'' (1899)

''A Trip to the Moon'' / ''Le Voyage dans la Lune'' (1902)

''The Man With The Rubber Head'' / ''L'homme à la tête de Caoutchouc'' (1902)

''Gulliver's Travels'' / ''Le Voyage de Gulliver à Lilliput et chez les Géants'' (1902)

''The Inn Where No Man Rests'' / ''L'Auberge du Bon Repos'' (1903)

''The Mystical Flame'' / ''La Flamme Merveilleuse'' (1903)

''Kingdom of the Fairies'' / ''Le Royaume des Fées'' (1903)

''Hilarious Posters'' / ''Les affiches en Guette'' (1905)

''Palace of the Arabian Knights'' / Le Palais des Mille et une Nuits'' (1905)

''Paris to Monte Carlo'' / ''Le raid Paris-Monte Carlo en Deux Heures'' (1905)

''The Mysterious Retort'' / ''L'Alchimiste Parafaragamus ou La Cornue Infernale'' (1906)

''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'' / ''20,000 Lieues Sous les Mers'' (1907)

''Conquest of the Pole'' / ''La Conquète du Pole'' (1912)

''Baron Munchausen's Dream'' / ''Les hallucinations du Baron de Münchausen'' (1911)

''The Ranchman's Debt of Honor'' (1911 - USA)

''The Knight of the Snows'' / ''Le Chevalier des Neiges'' (1912)

''Cinderella or The Glass Slipper'' / ''Cendrillon ou La Pantoufle Mystérieuse'' (1912)

''The Ghost of Sulpher Mountain'' (1912 -USA)

''The Prisoner's Story'' (1912 - USA)

''Le Voyage de la Famille Bourrichon'' (1913)

Videorecordings

Films of George Méliès

The Great Train Robbery and Other Primary Works

Marvelous Méliès

Méliès Le Cinémagicien

Mes Mémoires

Pioneers of the French Cinema, Volume One

''Le Grand Méliès'' (1952) - The life of Georges Méliès is told in this biodrama, directed by Georges Franju. André Méliès plays the part of his own father.

Popular culture

The work of Georges Méliès has been referenced a number of times in film, television and fiction, including:

The 1956 film version of ''Around the World in Eighty Days'' features ''Le Voyage Dans La Lune'' at the Introduction.

In Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 film, La Chinoise, Guillaume (Jean-Pierre Léaud) prefaces a lecture on current events with a discussion of who, in French cinema, was the true originator of the filming of current events, the Lumière brothers or Méliès. Guillaume makes the argument that Méliès, rather than the Lumières, was the true originator of current event films in French cinema.

The music video for The Smashing Pumpkins' song "Tonight, Tonight" was largely shot in the style of Méliès' best-known films, particularly ''Le Voyage Dans La Lune.'' The video also features a paddle wheel steamship named "S.S. Méliès."

In the last episode of the HBO miniseries ''From The Earth to the Moon'', Méliès was played by Tchéky Karyo.

Queen's 1995 video "Heaven for Everyone" uses clips from ''Le Voyage dans la Lune''

In series 2 and 3 of ''The Mighty Boosh'', an incidental character called 'The Moon' appears, complete with a face covered in shaving foam, bearing a strong resemblance to Méliès' moon in ''Le Voyage Dans La Lune''.

In the ''Futurama'' episode "The Series Has Landed", Bender planting a beer bottle in the right eye of an amusement park attendant with a moon-shaped head, leaving him looking like Méliès' moon with the spacecraft in its eye.

The 2007 children's novel ''The Invention of Hugo Cabret'' by Brian Selznick details the story of a young girl, Isabelle, and Hugo, the son of a horologist, who discover Georges Méliès' secret in 1931 Paris. This book won the Caldecott Medal in 2008. The novel is currently being adapted for the big screen by director Martin Scorsese with Ben Kingsley playing Georges Méliès.

See also

Gaston Méliès

La Maison de la Magie Robert-Houdin

References

External links

Official Georges Méliès website

Museo Méliès, English and Spanish (Pequeña Coleccion Privada)

Index des Films avec Georges Méliès

Cinémathèque Méliès (Les Amis de Georges Méliès)

Georges Méliès daily in-depth reviews of individual Méliès films

New music for Méliès - Bringing silent cinema back to life

Category:1861 births Category:1938 deaths Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery Category:Cinema pioneers Category:French animators Category:French actors Category:French film directors Category:Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Category:Special effects people Category:Silent film directors ar:جورج ميلييس bg:Жорж Мелиес ca:Georges Méliès cs:Georges Méliès de:Georges Méliès el:Ζορζ Μελιέ es:Georges Méliès eo:Georges Méliès eu:Georges Méliès fa:ژرژ ملیس fr:Georges Méliès it:Georges Méliès he:ז'ורז' מלייס la:Georgius Méliès lt:Georges Melies hu:Georges Méliès nl:Georges Méliès ja:ジョルジュ・メリエス no:Georges Méliès oc:Georges Méliès pl:Georges Méliès pt:Georges Méliès ksh:Georges Méliès ro:Georges Méliès ru:Мельес, Жорж sk:Georges Méliès sr:Жорж Мелијес sh:Georges Méliès fi:Georges Méliès sv:Georges Méliès tr:Georges Méliès