1893 - Thomas Edison builds "America's First Movie Studio", the Black Maria, in West Orange, New Jersey. The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope is held not at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences: The first film publicly shown on the system was Blacksmith Scene (aka Blacksmiths);
1895 - The cinématographe is patented. First footage ever to be shot using it is recorded on March 19. The Lumière brothers hold their first private screening of projected motion pictures on March 22. The Lumières give the first public screening at L'Eden, the world's first and oldest cinéma (theater), located in La Ciotat, France, on September 28. Gaumont Pictures is founded by the engineer-turned-inventor, Léon Gaumont. In the US, the Dickson Experimental Sound Film presents two men dancing to the sound of a violin player, in what the The Celluloid Closet calls the first gay cinema reference. The first screening of movies at which admission was charged takes place on December 28, in Paris, at the Salon Indien du Grand Café. This historical screening is based on ten short films, in the following order (and respective length): Sortie de l'usine Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory), 46 seconds; La Voltige ("Horse Trick Riders"), 46 seconds: La Pêche aux Poissons Rouges ("Fishing for Goldfish"), 42 seconds; Le Débarquement du Congrès de Photographie à Lyon ("The Disembarkment of the Congress of Photographers in Lyon"), 48 seconds; Les Forgerons ("Blacksmiths"), 49 seconds; Le Jardinier (l'Arroseur Arrosé) ("The Gardener, [The Sprinkler Sprinkled]"), 49 seconds; Le Repas (de Bébé) ("Baby's Meal"), 41 seconds; Le Saut à la Couverture ("Jumping Onto the Blanket"), 41 seconds; La Place des Cordeliers à Lyon ("Cordeliers Square in Lyon - a Street Scene"), 44 seconds; La Mer (Baignade en Mer) ("The Sea [Bathing in the Sea]"), 38 seconds .
1898 - Méliès starts producing under the brand Star Film and directs brief commercials. Hiralal Sen starts filming scenes of theatre productions at the Classic Theatre in Calcutta.
1899 - The first film version of Cinderella is released.
1903 - The Great Train Robbery by Edwin S. Porter, has a cowboy firing a gun at the camera. The movie is a breakthrough in techniques: cross cutting, double exposure composite editing, camera movement and on location shooting. The three elder Warner Bros. begin in the exhibition business. Gaston Méliès, Georges' brother, opens a branch of Star Film in New York to defend its production's copyrights.
1904 - The Great Train Robbery, a remake by Siegmund Lubin. Loews Theaters is founded by Marcus Loew; it will be the oldest theater chain operating in North America by the time it merges with AMC in 2006. Touring cinema begins in India, as Manek Sethna starts the Touring Cinema Co. in Bombay. All Méliès films begin being made with two negatives, the second of which is sent to New York to serve the American market.
1905 - The first "Nickelodeon" is born when Harry Davis and John P. Harris open their small, storefront theatre under that name on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Swamikannu Vincent, a draughtsman for the railways in India, sets up a touring cinema going around small towns and villages in the South of India.
1908 - Thomas Edison forms the Motion Picture Patents Company, also known as the Edison Trust, also known as the First Oligopoly, a trust of all the major film companies (Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Selig, Lubin, Kalem, American Star -Méliès-, American Pathé), the leading distributor (George Kleine) and the biggest supplier of raw film, Eastman Kodak. Pathé invents the newsreel that was shown in theaters prior to the feature film. In [[Paris)), Méliès presides over the first International Cinema Congress, attended by all major producers in the world.
1909 - Matsunosuke Onoe, who would become the first superstar of Japanese cinema, appears in his first film, Goban Tadanobu. Carl Laemmle starts the Yankee Film Company with partners Abe and Julius Stern, the seed to what will be Universal Studios. Again in Paris, Méliès presides over the second International Cinema Congress, obtaining the landmark decision of standard perfuration for film, enabling international projection.
1927 - Al Jolson movie The Jazz Singer popularizes sound motion pictures. Buster Keaton stars in The General. In Germany, Fritz Lang's groundbreaking Metropolis is released by Ufa; at the time, it was the most expensive movie ever made. The Hugenberg group takes over Ufa and reorganizes it to meet customer demand, effectively ending "the centre of creative filmmaking".
1928 - First talkie cartoon, Dinner Time is produced. The second talkie cartoon, Steamboat Willie, by Walt Disney, is released a month later. The first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, is released by Warner. MGM releases the first all-color sound feature (in Technicolor and including a synchronized score and sound effects but no spoken dialogue), entitled The Viking. Sergei Eisenstein releases October. The First Party Conference on Cinema is held in the Soviet Union, as a first step to a Five Year Plan for Cinema.
1930 - The first Busby Berkeley musical film, Whoopee! starring Eddie Cantor, is released by Goldwyn in color. The Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors Association (MPPDA), which later became the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), adopts the Production Code. Marlene Dietrich stars in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel, the first German-language talkie. At Warner Bros., the Looney Tunes cartoons begin, starring Bosko. MGM releases The Rogue Song, which becomes their first all color all-talking feature (in Technicolor). They purchase the rights to distribute a series of cartoons that star a character named Flip the Frog - the first cartoon in this series (entitled Fiddlesticks) was also the first sound cartoon to be produced in Technicolor.
