Results: MOVIE THEATER

The first motion pictures flickered to life in Thomas Alva Edison’s New Jersey laboratory in the early 1890s. Within two decades, movie theaters had sprouted across North America and Europe (with much of the rest of the world soon to follow), their seats packed daily with audiences consuming melodramas, comedies, newsreels, and animation. Then, in 1927, sound came to the big screen. For the first time, audiences heard the actors’ voices and were thrilled by the new dimension this brought to the experience. From cumbersome beginnings, sound technology—along with camera, film, and projection technology—steadily improved and films became increasingly sophisticated. It is now hard to imagine a time when films were not central to popular culture. (MoMa.org)