Biografie

Was the director and star of the very first surviving sound film, Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894).

Scott Smith's book "The Film 100", which ranks the 100 most important people of the first 100 years of cinema, ranks Dickson at #1 on the list. The reasons given are simple. He was a photographer who was fascinated with the idea of making photographs move in the fashion of magic lantern drawings. He sailed to America, ingratiated himself to Thomas A. Edison and convinced Edison to allow him to work on his dream. He collected for Edison's company the patents for cellulose film and the emulsion for that film. He then developed the movie camera and oversaw the Eastman Company's development of movie film. He also decided that movie film should be 35mm wide. In other words, he ranks as the most important person in motion picture history because he invented them.

On September 22, 1985, co-founded the K-M-C-D Syndicate, a production company, in Chicago, with his partners Elias B. Koopman, a businessman, and Henry N. Marvin, and Herman Casler, two inventors. On December 21st 1895, the syndicate was reorganized as the American Mutoscope Company, later to become American Mutoscope & Biograph Co., popularly known as American Biograph or just Biograph. Over the next two decades, many of the biggest names of the silent screen would get their first movie jobs at Biograph, including D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, Blanche Sweet, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish, and Florence Lawrence. The company is the oldest movie company in America, and continues to perpetuate the dreams and doings of Dickson and his partners.

Some books on the early days of the movie industry incorrectly list him as two separate people (William Kennedy and Laurie Dickson).

Pictured on one of a set of four 32¢ US commemorative postage stamps honoring "Pioneers of Communication", issued 22 February 1996. Also honored in the set are Eadweard Muybridge, Ottmar Mergenthaler (inventor of the Linoype machine), and Frederick Eugene Ives (inventor of the halftone photogravure printing process).