; seated to the rear, with the card "26" under his arm, is
Harold M. Shaw. The first production facility was
Edison's Black Maria studio, in
West Orange, New Jersey, built in the winter of 1892–93. The second facility, a glass-enclosed rooftop studio built at 41 East 21st Street in
Manhattan's entertainment district, opened in 1901. In 1907, Edison had new facilities built, on Decatur Avenue and Oliver Place, in the
Bedford Park neighborhood of
the Bronx. , an early
motion picture innovator, film production
inventor, and assistant of
Thomas A. Edison, eventually left to form the
Biograph Company. , an Edison Studios film producer 1909–1915 Thomas Edison himself played no direct part in the making of his studios' films, beyond being the owner and appointing
William Gilmore as vice-president and general manager. Edison's assistant
William Kennedy Dickson, who supervised the development of Edison's motion picture system, produced the first Edison films intended for public exhibition, 1893–95. After Dickson's departure for the
American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1895, he was replaced as director of production by cameraman
William Heise, then from 1896 to 1903, by
James H. White. When White left to supervise Edison's European interests in 1903, he was replaced by
William Markgraf (1903–1904), then
Alex T. Moore (1904–1909), and
Horace G. Plimpton (1909–1915). The first commercially exhibited motion pictures in the United States were from Edison, and premiered at a
Kinetoscope parlor in New York City on April 14, 1894. The program consisted of ten short films, each less than a minute long, of athletes, dancers, and other performers. After competitors began exhibiting films on screens, Edison introduced its own,
Projecting Kinetoscope, in late 1896. The earliest productions were brief "actualities", showing everything, from acrobats, to parades, to fire calls. But, competition from French and British story films, in the early 1900s, rapidly changed the market. By 1904, 85% of Edison's sales were from story films. In December 1908, Edison led the formation of the
Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison, Biograph,
Essanay Studios,
Kalem Company,
George Kleine Productions,
Lubin Studios,
Georges Méliès,
Pathé,
Selig Studios, and
Vitagraph Studios, and dominated distribution through the
General Film Company. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of
antitrust violation in October 1915, and were dissolved. The breakup of the Trust by federal courts, under
monopoly laws, and the loss of European markets during
World War I, hurt Edison financially. Edison sold its film business, including the Bronx studio, on 30 March 1918, to the
Lincoln & Parker Film Company, of
Massachusetts. ==Notable productions==