Only While Famous

Leading theatrical figures of the 1880s found their faces and names looking back at them from a pattern glass tableware sometimes called “actress glass.” Altogether, 26 different stage personalities were used to decorate everything from goblets to bread trays.

This did not guarantee immortality, however. When an actress ceased to be important, her name was removed from the glass.

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Pressing Machine Revolutionized
Production Of Glass Objects

For hundreds of years, glass objects were made by blowing into the desired shape or into a mold for forming. This process was revolutionized in 1825 when John P. Bakewell of Pittsburgh patented an automatic pressing machine.

The glass was fed automatically from a vat into a stamping machine where individual items were pressed out like cookies. Now American manufacturers could produce huge quantities of glass tableware and kitchenware, such as cups, plates and bowls. Collectively these are known as pressed or pattern glass. Accurately speaking, the term pattern glass should be limited to pieces that were made in sets for table use. This early pressed glass was always clear.

While pressed glass manufacturing was developing, another form of glassmaking was also evolving. Art glass was hand blown and hand decorated and often took elaborate shapes. Color was an important feature of art glass, with special features such as iridescence and opalescence.

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Edison Let Someone Else Develop
The Movie Projector

Thomas Edison invented, among many other things, the motion picture projector. He lent his practical hand and talents to perfecting a projection system after George Eastman had invented film with sprocket holes. Edison figured out how to build the machine and set up his Kinetoscope and demonstrated it in 1889.

The machine was not one of Edison’s favorites and he often announced that it would “never amount to a damn.” He placed the machine aside and went on to other things.

In 1891, a promoter named Thomas Lombard got Edison’s consent to make up ten more machines and use them to put on shows in his Kinetoscope Parlors. He also planned to exhibit them at the Columbian Exposition in 1892. He never made it, even though the fair was a year late, because he had trouble making the machines operate properly. He finally managed to get a Kinetoscope Parlor opened on April 14, 1894, in New York City.

Edison never showed much interest and even refused to pay the $150 fee so his patents could be registered overseas.

The popularity of the machines demanded changes. Only one person at a time could view the show on Edison’s machines.

A promoter named Thomas Armat, who was an inventor himself, designed and built a new movie projector called a Vitascope, He displayed it using Edison’s films in 1895. It was not as popular as expected, and improvements were required. However Armat’s Vitascope projecting Edison’s films in 1896 in New York led to the modern concept of movies in a theater. One of these films included the first movie kiss, when John Rice bussed May Irwin to gain film immortality.

These early movies, frequently dubbed peep shows, were not much more than curiosities. But they managed to hold on by using every promotion known at the time.

The big breakthrough came in 1905. One of Edison’s cameramen, just playing around, made The Great Train Robbery. This was the first movie ever made that had a continuing story. He had his little movie perfected and ready by 1905, and it was shown in a Pittsburgh theater that was standing empty. The Great Train Robbery created, in one day, the movie house and the insatiable desire of people to go to the movies.

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