Motion Pictures

This company was incorporated in New Jersey on September 9, 1908, by the Edison Manufacturing Company and the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company. It pooled the requisite and previously competing patents and licensing arrangements in the manufacture and projection of motion pictures. An antitrust suit filed by the federal government on August 15, 1912, resulted in rulings against the company on October 1, 1915, and January 24, 1916. The company was sold on July 31, 1918, but it maintained a legal existence until its charter was forfeited on January 28, 1928.

This New York-based partnership entered the motion picture business in 1894. During the period August 18, 1894-July 29, 1896, it served as the sales agent for the Kinetoscope Company. In 1896 the partners severed their connections with the Kinetoscope Company and formed the Vitascope Company.

This company was incorporated on May 7, 1896, by Raft & Gammon. It owned the rights to exhibit the vitascope projector, invented by Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins and manufactured by the Edison Manufacturing Company. The company sold films and leased projectors to those licensees who bought subrights to the vitascope in specific territories.