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How It All Started
Eadweard Muybridge was sitting around watching horses when he decided to make a 25,000 (I KNOW RIGHT?! THATS A LOUGH OF DOUGH!!) dollar bet on how horses will some point have all their hoofs off the ground. -
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"Cinématographe Léon Bouly"
Originally the "cinematograph" (from the Greek for "writing in movement) was invented by a man named Leon Bouly in 1892 but he didnt have enough money to develop it so he sold his idea to Auguste and Louis Lumière ( also known as the Lumiere brothers ) . They applied their name to the device like it was their idea in 1895 -
Kinetoscope Parlor
Instead of movie theaters there where "Kinetoscope Parlors". They where for one person because Edison wanted to make more money off of using a "Peephole" instead of the entire Projector. -
Alice Guy
Alice Guy was the first woman director in the Film Company in France -
Movies Arrive in the US
Soon attract large and enthusiastic audiences; critics assail them, including Thomas Edison's landmark 1896 film, The Kiss, as a threat to morality. -
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The Nickelodeon
The Nickelodeon was the first type of indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures -
Chicago
Chicago enacts the first movie censorship law in America. Cities and states around the nation create local censorships boards in the following years, resulting in a variety of different rules and standards. -
The National Board Of Censorship
Created after complaints about "indecent" films causes movie theaters in New York City to close. -
(WCTU)
The Women's Christian Temperance Union which in 1906 condemned the influence of movies on the health, well-being and morals of impressionable youth, begins to lobby aggressively for government regulation of films. The WCTU claims that films are "addictive," that they glorify war and violence, and that they cause crime, delinquency and immoral behavior. -
Margaret Sanger
Indicted under federal obscenity laws for her book A Woman Rebel. After additional indictments and arrests, she flees to Europe, to return later and open the first birth control clinic in New York. -
The Sedition Act and Espionage Act
making it illegal for Americans to publicly criticize the United States government, the American flag, U.S. military, and the Constitution -
The WCTU
The WCTU decides that movies are the most important cultural influence on youth and that the MPPDA is not doing enough to regulate their content. It forms a Motion Picture Department to press for government regulation. -
IFE
Independent film exhibitors, frustrated by movie studio rules that give them little say over what films they show, create the Allied States Association, and join other critics in calling for government regulation. -
The Catholic Legion of Decency is formed
An estimated 10 million Catholics sign a pledge "to refrain from viewing all objectionable movies or attending any theater that showed such films." However, the Legion advocates self-regulation, not government regulation, because of concern for separation of church and state. The risk of Catholic boycotts, however, provides an economic incentive to placate Catholic critics.
