Movies
A Midcentury GE Superstar Returns to the Limelight
In Steven Spielberg’s latest film, The Fabelmans, the director brings it all back home with a largely fact-based portrayal of his upbringing in New Jersey, Arizona, and Northern California. Burt Fabelman, as many GE history buffs could tell you, is based on the very real Arnold Spielberg, Steven’s father, who worked for the company in Phoenix in the late 1950s and early 1960s, where he developed one of the first mainframe computers and helped pave the way for the programming of the BASIC computer language, which ushered in personal computing.
Talkies
Talking Shop: The Award For The Most Important Invention In Motion Picture History Goes To…
In the Hollywood version of Hollywood history, the movie industry exploded in popularity thanks to a pair of brilliant inventions. First Thomas Edison’s movie camera gave birth to the silent film business, then the discovery of “sound on film” made the talkies possible and multiplied the power and importance of the movie industry once again.
As with many Hollywood tales, the true story is not quite that simple.
Oscars
The Boxing Cats In The Doghouse: The Untold Story Of Thomas Edison and the Earliest Movies
The wooden box didn’t look like much. Inside was a complicated mechanism that used a sprocket powered by an electric motor to pull the perforated edge of unexposed celluloid film, which had just been invented by George Eastman. The film moved in front of a lens at a speed of 46 frames per second.