Happy January 7th! Two thousand twenty-three begins with a film premiere of sorts for Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7th, 1894. The day is an anniversary for the milestone of cinema commonly known as Fred Ott’s Sneeze. In 1894, Thomas Edison instructed W. K. L. Dickson to make a demonstration recording of their new Kinetoscope and to send a photographic illustration to Harper’s Weekly, which had requested a sneeze. This marks the web debut of the Library of Congress restoration, which begins with the familiar footage (first reanimated in 1953) and ends with the additional frames published in Harper’s, March 24,
Tag: sneeze
Filmography: Edison-Ott Sneeze (1894)
As part of this website’s annotated filmography of all works shown at the 2014 Orphan Film Symposium, the descriptions below are for items shown as part of this presentation: Dan Streible, “A New Look at an Old Sneeze: Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze,” 9th Orphan Film Symposium, Obsolescence, Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam, Mar. 31, 2014. Includes live accompaniment by Stephen Horne. 27 min. Audio here. Recorded in January 1894, Fred Ott’s Sneeze (as it came to be known) was not seen as a moving image until reanimated from still photographs to 16mm film in 1953. The many film histories written before and