Media related to 1894 in film at Wikimedia Commons

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He 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-scale teamwork to the process of invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Edison is the fourth 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.

Annie Oakley (August 13, 1860 – November 3, 1926), born Phoebe Ann Moses, was an American sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Oakley's amazing talent and timely rise to fame led to a starring role in Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar.

Oakley's most famous trick is perhaps being able to repeatedly split a playing card, edge-on, and put several more holes in it before it could touch the ground, while using a .22 caliber rifle, at 90 feet.

Phoebe Ann (Annie) Moses was born in "a cabin less than two miles northwest of Willowdell in Partentown North Star, Ohio", a rural western border county of Ohio. Her birthplace log cabin site is about five miles eastward of North Star. There is a stone-mounted plaque in the vicinity of the cabin site, which was placed by the Annie Oakley Committee in 1981, 121 years after her birth.

Annie's parents were Quakers of English descent from Hollidaysburg, Blair County, Pennsylvania: Susan Wise, age 18, and Jacob Moses (1860 U.S. Census shows his father's name as Mauzy, born 1799), age 49, married in 1848. A fire burned down their tavern in Hollidaysburg, so they moved to a rented farm (later purchased with a mortgage) in Patterson Township, Darke County. The move occurred sometime between 1855 and her sister Sarah Ellen's Darke County birth in 1857.^{[citation needed]}

Frederick P. Ott (1860; New Jersey – October 24, 1936; West Orange, New Jersey) was an employee of Thomas Edison's laboratory in the 1890s. His likeness appears in two of the earliest surviving motion pictures – Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (a.k.a. Fred Ott's Sneeze) and Fred Ott Holding a Bird – both from 1894.

In the former film, Ott takes a pinch of snuff, which causes him to sneeze.

Ernest John Moeran (31 December 1894 – 1 December 1950) was an English composer who had strong associations with Ireland (his father was Irish, he spent much of his life there, and he died there).

Moeran was born in Heston (now in the London Borough of Hounslow), the son of an Irish clergyman. The family moved around for several years as the Revd J. W. W. Moeran was appointed to various parishes but they eventually settled in Bacton, on the coast of Norfolk.

Moeran studied the violin and the piano as a child. He was educated from an early age at home, by a governess. At the age of ten, he was sent to Suffield Park Preparatory School in Cromer, North Norfolk. In 1908, he was enrolled at Uppingham School where he spent the next five years. He was taught music by the director Robert Sterndale Bennett (grandson of Sir William Sterndale Bennett), who greatly encouraged his talents. On leaving Uppingham in 1913, he studied piano and composition at the Royal College of Music with Charles Villiers Stanford. He was also a member of the prestigious Oxford & Cambridge Musical Club.