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1910 Chronokey Chronomedia index
Numbers after entries link to the list of references.


links and notes
January 13  A broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, New York by De Forest Radio-Telephone Company includes performances by opera stars Enrico Caruso and Emmy Destinn.  
January   Cinematograph Act comes into effect in UK. It leads to the closure of many venues and a spate of building new cinemas.  
January 30  Primitive ‘television’ system employing a matrix of 64 photocells capable of reproducing a limited step grey scale, is described by Georges Rignoux at La Rochelle, France, who had developed it over preceding months, apparently with successful practical experiments.  
February 1  Edison Talking Picture Company begins the production of Kinetophone short sound films at West 43rd Street, New York, before moving to its Decatur Avenue studio in the Bronx. 0025  
February 24  Electric Cinema, Portobello Road, London W, is opened in a converted restaurant. It is probably the second oldest surviving and still operational UK cinema, albeit not in continuous use. < 1909
See Duke of York's, Brighton below
spring  In Denmark, a Statens Arkiv for Historiske Film og Stemmer (Danish State Archive for Historical Film and Speech) is proposed by Anker Kirkeby of Copenhagen Politiken to Ole Olsen of Nordisk Film. < 1898
> 1913
April 18  Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) forms a distribution subsidiary, the General Film Company. It introduces the practices of ‘barring’ (called ‘zoning’ in the US) to give particular exhibitors the exclusive rights to the first run of films in specific geographical areas, and of ‘blind booking’, requiring exhibitors to take whichever other films are offered in order to acquire the most popular titles. The ‘first-run’ concept allows a higher rental to be charged for new films.
        The only major objector to and competitor for the MPPC is William Fox. Carl Laemmle's Universal Pictures also remains independent as does Adolph Zukor. Independents make the move to Hollywood, away from the New York City-based Trust.
 
May 20  Funeral of King Edward VII is filmed in Kinemacolor—the first colour news film of importance. > 1914
August 27  First radio message is sent from an aircraft in flight, at Sheepshead Bay, Long Island, NY, by J A D McCurdy.  
September 14  Sweden's first purpose-built cinema, the Biografteatern Scala, opens in Ystad. Still operating but closed 1982-1995.
September 22  Opening of the Duke of York's Cinema in Brighton, England, which remains in use as a picture house (barring two brief closures) to the present day, making it perhaps the longest constantly operated purpose-built British cinema. Brighton cinemas
•  Other surviving British cinemas also opened this year include the Electric Cinema, Portobello Road, London and East Finchley Picturedrome, London (now The Phoenix)  
•  The first purpose-built permanent cinema sites open in Germany.  
September   Robert Loraine, an actor, sends a radio message from an aeroplane to the ground over Salisbury Plain, England.  
October 15  First air-sea rescue using radio saves the crew of the airship America.  
November   In Australia, Pathé’s Australian Animated Gazette cinema newsreel is started, its name shortening to The Australian Gazette in 1914 and later to The Australasian Gazette. see also 1929 March)
December 3  First installation of a neon lamp sign, invented by Georges Claude (1871-1960), at the Paris Motor Show at the Grand Palais.  
December 24, 17:30  Kinemacolor Palace cinema opens in Anlaby Road, Hull, Yorkshire.  
•  Film studio is opened at Whipps Cross, Walthamstow in east London. Three other studios follow in the same area, at Hoe Street, Lea Bridge Road and Wood Street.  
•  Bell & Howell makes its first cine camera—model 2709, considered best then available—plus film perforator and continuous film printer.  
•  Eugène Lauste makes a practical sound-on-film recording.  
•  First (datable) Bulgarian film production: Bulgarians are Gallant by Vassil Gendov.  
•  First film is produced in Ireland by Kalem Company of Chicago.  
•  Pathé Animated Gazette is started as a regular weekly newsreel in UK.  
•  Danish film Den Hvide Slavehandel (The White Slave Trade) create a worldwide sensation by treating prostitution explicitly. Films with themes of crime and vice start to appear in many countries. Dramatic lighting effects start to be employed, many being used initially in Danish productions.  
•  Dominated by Pathé, French films account for 36 per cent of all UK releases, ahead of 28 per cent from the US and 17 per cent from Italy. British films manage only 15 per cent.  
•  Winsor McCay first makes an animated cartoon film of Gertie the Trained Dinosaur.  
•  UK now has 295 film exhibition companies capitalised at £3.04m.  
•  Association of Film Renters (later the Kinematograph Renters Society) is formed in UK.  
•  US has 9,480 cinemas.  
•  There are now 122,000 telephones installed in the UK.  
•  Study of ‘dielectric waveguides’ such as glass rods, is published.  
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Page updated 9 November 2008
© David Fisher