“Ten million people a day go to the movies in the United States, but how many of them know who made the first movie? The Noes have it. The man who made the first motion-picture, as we know it today, is C. Francis Jenkins (1867 – 1934). Many [actresses] who have not been ‘in pictures’ a month are better known.”
“The first time admission was charged was at Atlanta, Ga., in 1895. The show was a failure. People could not believe that you could show pictures of people moving about, and would not surrender their money on any more of them catchpennies. The term motion picture had not been invented yet. There was nothing to describe what was to be seen. The project was abandoned and the young inventor came home pretty down in the mouth. Later he [impulsively] sold his interest in the invention for $2,500.”
Jenkins was also one of the brainiacs who contributed his talent to the invention of television: the 1923 picture posted below shows him displaying the first televised images.
