# Projected Edison Vitascope pictures are shown at Koster and Bial’s in New York

Date: 1896

## The fact

On 23 April 1896 projected moving pictures under the Edison Vitascope name were shown at Koster and Bial’s Music Hall in New York. The peep-show Kinetoscope is a prior Fact.

## Context

Lumières had already projected in Paris in 1895. Armat’s projector was rebranded. [Edison](/people/thomas-edison)’s company supplied films and the famous name. Complex contribution is required.

Thomas Edison is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Library of Congress motion-picture history and Britannica independently date the 1896 New York projection.

Official or archival record: Edison Company Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings (https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/; Library of Congress).

## Significance

Cultural-access path. High confidence on the show; medium on Edison’s technical share versus Armat and the Lumières.

A brand on a projector is not the same as the optical design. Name Armat.

## What is established and what is not

Established: 23 April 1896 Vitascope show in New York with Edison branding. Not established: that Edison invented projection, or that cinema as such begins that night in Manhattan.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Thomas Edison: https://factrail.ai/people/thomas-edison

## Drivers

- Social Cohesion: https://factrail.ai/drivers/social-cohesion

## Sources

- https://www.loc.gov/collections/edison-company-motion-pictures-and-sound-recordings/
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Edison

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/us-edison-vitascope-1896