År 1904

Automobile Race for the Vanderbilt Cup

A family moves out to the 'peaceful' suburbs where everything goes wrong, including the mother-in-law moving in.

Billy Bitzer filmed 21 short actualities inside the Pittsburgh Westinghouse Works in April and May of 1904. Audiences of the day would have been treated to footage of factory panoramas, women winding armatures and turbines being assembled. These industrial films were produced for the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company.

Using every known means of transportation, several savants from the Geographic Society undertake a journey through the Alps to the Sun which finishes under the sea.

A closeup of the steam whistle blowing at the "Westinghouse works" complex of factories in Pennsylvania, probably at the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co.

A camera moving forward on an overhead crane gives a traveling view of men working on machinery. Carts carrying parts and pieces of machinery pass by on rails; cranes lift machinery; and men perform their various duties, including hammering objects. (Library of Congress)

During a strike, several workers are killed in a confrontation. The wife of one of them kills the factory owner. At her trial, the owner's son asks for mercy, knowing that his father was wrong. Because of that the wife is freed.

A small group of men turn on what appears to be a generator. As the rotary spins, the men make adjustments to the machine and check its operations.

Two workers leave boxes of explosives with a push cart street vendor while they visit a bar. They return drunk and accidentally drop a box of nitro powder, causing an explosion that wrecks the block and blows off the vendor’s arm. A policeman shows up to the carnage and tries to replace the vendor’s arm with a severed leg.

Recreation of a real-life fire that took 602 lives.

A fairly venturesome piece of filmmaking for the era: Based on the Jules Verne story, the film utilizes a dozen cuts, irised lenses, panning shots and vivid tints to weave an intrepid and exciting story.

A mountaineer loads a shipment of moonshine whiskey onto his horse-cart, then goes to make a delivery. After he leaves, a revenue agent comes to the mountaineer's house to stake it out, and he soon observes some whiskey being traded for corn. The agent at once goes to alert other revenue officers, who arm themselves with rifles and then begin an immediate search for the moonshiner's still.

A brief vaudeville-style demonstration of a "Dog Transformator," a machine that instantly turns dogs into sausages, and amazingly, sausages back into dogs.

Facing a stationary camera, sitting at a desk, a man works busily. Posters of burlesque queens are on the wall behind him. A single woman, followed later by later two others, comes into the office seeking a job. The manager hands each a box with a costume in it and points to dressing rooms. Each of the women has a different reaction when she discovers the nature of her costume, and the busy manager has a distinct response to each of the women as well.

A magician conjures up a mermaid while fishing.

During a game of hide and seek, a new bride hides in a chest and remains undiscovered until a strange visitation thirty years later.

A “madman” escapes prison and the torments of his warders.

Numerous women stand at several rows of tables where they appear to be wrapping tape around some devices, presumably coils. Male supervisors walk down the aisles, observing the women's work.

A Chinese conjurer stands next to a table, it becomes two tables. A fan becomes a parasol, lanterns appear and disappear. The conjurer spins the open parasol in front of himself, and a dog leaps out from behind it. The dog becomes a woman, then a masked man appears. The conjurer sits them each on a box a few feet apart: suddenly the woman and man have changed places. The disappearing and the transfers continue in front of a simple backdrop.