Edison Kinetographic Record of a Sneeze (1894)
The film shows Edison studio employee Fred Ott, in close-up, taking a pinch of snuff and sneezing for the camera — a single unbroken action recorded to illustrate a Harper's Weekly article on Edison's new Kinetoscope.
Edison Kinetographic Record of a Sneeze, better known as Fred Ott’s Sneeze, is the second-oldest surviving copyrighted motion picture in the United States, filed for copyright as a strip of still photographs just two days after it was shot in January 1894.
Background
Better known today as Fred Ott’s Sneeze, this very brief film shows Edison studio employee Fred Ott taking a pinch of snuff and sneezing for the camera in close-up. It was made to illustrate a magazine article about Thomas Edison’s new Kinetoscope viewing device, and it was filed for copyright, as a strip of still photographs rather than as a motion picture in the modern sense, just two days after it was shot in January 1894, making it one of the very earliest copyrighted motion pictures in the United States.
What to watch for
Watch it with an awareness of how different early film technology was from what came later: the Kinetoscope was a peep-show device viewed by one person at a time looking into a cabinet, not a projected theatrical experience, and a film this short and simple was considered a meaningful technical demonstration at the time. It offers a useful starting point for understanding just how new and experimental moving pictures still were in the mid-1890s, only a few years before narrative filmmaking of the kind seen in The Great Train Robbery began to develop.
