Anecdotes

Was the director and star of the very first surviving sound film, Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894).

Scott Smith's book "The Film 100", which ranks the 100 most important people of the first 100 years of cinema, ranks Dickson at #1 on the list. The reasons given are simple. He was a photographer who was fascinated with the idea of making photographs move in the fashion of magic lantern drawings. He sailed to America, ingratiated himself to Thomas A. Edison and convinced Edison to allow him to work on his dream. He collected for Edison's company the patents for cellulose film and the emulsion for that film. He then developed the movie camera and oversaw the Eastman Company's development of movie film. He also decided that movie film should be 35mm wide. In other words, he ranks as the most important person in motion picture history because he invented them.

On September 22, 1985, co-founded the K-M-C-D Syndicate, a production company, in Chicago, with his partners Elias B. Koopman, a businessman, and Henry N. Marvin, and Herman Casler, two inventors. On December 21st 1895, the syndicate was reorganized as the American Mutoscope Company, later to become American Mutoscope & Biograph Co., popularly known as American Biograph or just Biograph. Over the next two decades, many of the biggest names of the silent screen would get their first movie jobs at Biograph, including D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Blanche Sweet, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, and Florence Lawrence. The company is the oldest movie company in America, and continues to perpetuate the dreams and doings of Dickson and his partners.

Some books on the early days of the movie industry incorrectly list him as two separate people (William Kennedy and Laurie Dickson).

Pictured on one of a set of four 32¢ US commemorative postage stamps honoring "Pioneers of Communication", issued 22 February 1996. Also honored in the set are Eadweard Muybridge, Ottmar Mergenthaler (inventor of the Linoype machine), and Frederick Eugene Ives (inventor of the halftone photogravure printing process).

Though he was an important early employee of the Edison Co., Dickson secretly developed strong ties to Edison competitors. In 1895 he founded The American Mutoscope Company, that went on to become The American Mutoscope & Biograph Co. and to be the biggest American rival of the Edison Co.

Invented the Kinetoscope with Eugène Lauste. A precursor to the modern television, it was capable of providing moving images in playback, along with rubber ear tubes to provide synchronized sound. It worked by synchronizing sound and images (roughly) with a mechanical belt, but due to belt slippage, the machine failed in it's task more often than it succeeded.

Grew up in London, England, UK

He has directed thirteen films that have been selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant: Newark Athlete (1891), Blacksmith Scene (1893), Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894), Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894), Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1895), Awakening of Rip (1896), Rip's Twenty Years' Sleep (1896), Exit of Rip and the Dwarf (1896), Rip Leaving Sleepy Hollow (1896), Rip Passing Over the Mountain (1896), Rip's Toast (1896), Rip Meeting the Dwarf (1896), & Rip's Toast to Hudson (1896).