“Moving images are exhibited in about ten thousand theaters and halls in the United States. With the swift unfold of this new amusement has also appear a marked transform in the community style. Spectators have been once quite content material with a look at of manufacturing facility employees heading to and from their function, the arrival and departure of railway trains, and related scenes. Currently, a much more or much less coherent tale have to be unfolded, for which motive the makers of transferring images have been compelled to compose performs (or at minimum to conceive them) and to have them acted just before the digicam.”

Scientific American, June 1909

A lot more gems from Scientific American’s initially 175 several years can be located on our anniversary archive web page.