''Fred Ott's Sneeze'' (also known as ''Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze'') is an 1894 short,

black-and-white Black-and-white (B&W or B/W) images combine black and white in a continuous spectrum, producing a range of shades of grey. Media The history of various visual media began with black and white, and as technology improved, altered to color. ...

silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized Sound recording and reproduction, recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) ...

shot by William K.L. Dickson and featuring Fred Ott. It is the oldest surviving motion picture with a copyright. In the approximately five-second film, which was shot in January 1894, one of

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventi ...

's assistants, Fred Ott, takes a pinch of

snuff Snuff may refer to: Tobacco * Snuff (tobacco), fine-ground tobacco, sniffed into the nose ** Moist snuff or dipping tobacco ** Creamy snuff, an Indian tobacco paste Media and entertainment * Snuff film, a type of film that shows a murder Literat ...

and sneezes. According to the Library of Congress, the film was "made for publicity purposes, as a series of still photographs to accompany an article in ''

Harper's Weekly ''Harper's Weekly, A Journal of Civilization'' was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many subjects, and humor, ...

''." In 2015, the United States

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library ...

selected the film for preservation in the

National Film Registry The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception ...

, finding it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Production

The film was produced by the

Edison Manufacturing Company The Edison Manufacturing Company, originally registered as the United Edison Manufacturing Company and often known as simply the Edison Company, was organized by inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison and incorporated in New York City in May 188 ...

, which had begun making films in 1890 under the direction of Dickson, one of the earliest film pioneers. It was filmed within the

Black Maria Black Maria may refer to: Art and literature * Black Mariah (comics), a character in the Luke Cage comics series * Black Maria, a character in the manga series ''One Piece'' * ''Black Maria'' (novel), a 1991 novel by Diana Wynne Jones *''Blac ...

studio at

West Orange, New Jersey West Orange is a suburban township in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 48,843, an increase of 2,636 (+5.7%) from the 46,207 counted in the 2010 Census.

, which was the first U.S. movie studio. It was filmed between January 2, 1894, and January 7, 1894 and was displayed, at the time, through the means of a

Kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic approach that woul ...

Current status

As a film published in the United States before 1978 and more than 95 years ago, its

copyright A copyright is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the exclusive right to copy, distribute, adapt, display, and perform a creative work, usually for a limited time. The creative work may be in a literary, artistic, educatio ...

expired and the work is in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

in the United States. In countries where copyright expires 70 years after the author's death, the copyright of the film expired in 2006. Originally, the film was submitted to the

as a "paper print" (a photographic record of each frame of the film) for copyright purposes. A digital copy is now kept by the Library of Congress and can be viewed on their

American Memory American Memory is an internet-based archive for public domain image resources, as well as audio, video, and archived Web content. Published by the Library of Congress, the archive launched on October 13, 1994, after $13 million was raised in ...

website. This short film was featured at the 30th Annual Academy Awards, and was included as part of the TV documentary, ''The First 100 Years: A Celebration of American Movies''.

References

External links

Library of Congress

Video of ''Fred Ott's Sneeze''
on

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Fred Otts Sneeze 1894 films American short documentary films American black-and-white films American silent short films Articles containing video clips Thomas Edison Films directed by William Kennedy Dickson Films shot in New Jersey 1890s short documentary films Black-and-white documentary films United States National Film Registry films Edison Manufacturing Company films Sneeze 1890s American films

Production

Current status

See also

References

External links