The first music video, 1895
This film, known as The Dickson Experimental Sound Film, is the first known film with live-recorded sound. This short film was a test for Edison’s “Kinetophone” project, the first attempt in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization. William Dickson attempted to put sound and film together either in 1894 or 1895, but unfortunately this experiment failed because they didn’t understand synchronization of sound and film.
The large cone on the left hand side of the frame is the “microphone” for the wax cylinder recorder (off-camera). The wax cylinder soundtrack, however, was believed lost for many years. In 1998, Patrick Loughney, curator of Film and Television at the Library of Congress, retrieved the cylinder and had it repaired and re-recorded.
The film features William Dickson playing the melody “Song of the Cabin Boy” from the light opera “The Chimes of Normandy“, composed by Robert Planquette in 1877.
The two men dancing are likely to be employees at Edison’s studio – the Black Maria. The lyric of the song they are dancing to describes life at sea without women.
