The Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition

These documents cover the years 1911 and 1932-1933. The first item, from the William N. Selig Collection, is a July 1911 letter from Frank L. Dyer, president of Thomas A. Edison, Inc., to motion picture producer Selig discussing plans to build a new film plant and studio in West Orange. The remaining items are from the Earl Theisen Collection and consist of letters to Thiesen, a photographer and film historian, from Dyer, motion picture producer Thomas Armat, and former Edison associate William K. L. Dickson. The documents relate to the development of the Vitascope projector by Armat and C. Francis Jenkins and its subsequent sale to Edison and to Dickson's role in the experiments leading to the invention of the kinetograph and kinetoscope. One letter contains a drawing of the Black Maria, the motion picture studio constructed at West Orange in 1893.