Thomas A. Edison Movies

The Birth of the Telephone (1914) is a Kinetophone short produced by Edison, featuring Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell,...

A location actuality filmed in Philadelphia (May 27–28, 1904) documenting the Inter-Collegiate Athletic Association’s championships:...

The Edison Quartet perform songs as blacksmiths. This was one of 200 projects produced using the Edison Kinetophone system. The Kinetophone was a...

A six-part documentary recording the 74-year-old Edison's collaborations with his staff, conversations with industrial leaders, and supervision of...

1897 version of Annabelle Moore performing a serpentine dance.

A formerly lost Edison film from 1912.

A satirical short produced to highlight the unreasonable extremes of local film censorship—a film so heavily censored that only the title cards...

A documentary overview of the career of silent cinema pioneer Edwin S. Porter.

This 1894 film depicts a staged “war council” featuring a group of Sioux men in traditional dress, seated in deliberation as Buffalo Bill...

This short captures the thrill of winter sport in Canada, showing skiers racing downhill at high speed before leaping over a snow-built hurdle. Most...

A comedy of a young man’s humiliating initiation into a woman-hating men’s club, The Five Jolly Bachelors. With Eddie Boulden and the...

By the time he died in 1931, Thomas Alva Edison was one of the most famous men in the world. The holder of more patents than any other inventor in...

Civil War drama of a Confederate spy who is captured by Union soldiers.

Metropolitan Opera stars, tenor Enrico Caruso and bass-baritone Pol Plancon, in a scene from the opera "Lucia di Lammermoor" filmed in Edison...

An Edison Kinetophone short presenting an on-stage minstrel company performing musical numbers and patter; made as part of Edison’s early...

On February 17, 1913, after many years of R+D, Thomas Alva Edison introduced the Edison Kinetophone to an enthusiastic New York audience. The...

Shows ice plows in operation, drawn by horses and guided by men on skates. The plows are first operated in one direction and then crosswise, cutting...

The Old Violin (1914) is a Kinetophone short produced by Edison, directed by Daniel Higham. The film features an elderly violinist reprimanding a...

“This film is remarkable in several respects. In the first place, it is full life-size. Secondly, it is the only accurate recent portrait of...

A short film in which the members of the Motion Pictures Patents Company (which had been founded only a year earlier) congratulate Thomas Edison...