Edison Studios

After the train station clerk is assaulted and left bound and gagged, then the departing train and its passengers robbed, a posse goes in hot pursuit of the fleeing bandits.

A poor young boy goes on a field trip and dreams of escaping to a land beyond the sunset.

Frankenstein, a young medical student, trying to create the perfect human being, instead creates a misshapen monster. Made ill by what he has done, Frankenstein is comforted by his fiancée; but on his wedding night he is visited by the monster.

When a burglar dressed as Santa Claus steals a family's Christmas presents, amateur detective Octavius sets out to recover the loot.

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.

It's a busy day at the office, and the stenographer is exhausted from trying to keep up with the demands on her skills. Even when she stays late, she cannot catch up with all of the work. But then a man comes into the office to demonstrate the many advantages of the Edison System, his company's new business phonograph.

A short film depicting the execution of Mary, Queen of the Scots. Mary is brought to the execution block and made to kneel down with her neck over it. The executioner lifts his axe ready to bring it down. After that frame Mary has been replaced by a dummy. The axe comes down and severs the head of the dummy from the body. The executioner picks up the head and shows it around for everyone else to see. One of the first camera tricks to be used in a movie.

A wealthy young American, bred to class distinction and racial intolerance, enters the Marines during the First World War. In the course of his training and his experiences in the trenches fighting, being wounded by, and being hospitalized with Germans, he comes to a recognition of the equality and brotherhood of men.

An early Thomas Edison short. A young woman is kidnapped while attending a play in Chinatown. A reporter attends another play in Chinatown, is likewise kidnapped and rescues the young woman. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2011 in partnership with the National Film Preservation Foundation New Zealand Project.

This is a film taken of the execution of Topsy, an elephant employed to help build Luna Park on Coney Island.

Porter's sequential continuity editing links several shots to form a narrative of firemen responding to a house fire. They leave the station with their horse drawn pumper, arrive on the scene, and effect the safe rescue of a woman from the burning house. But wait, she tells them of her child yet asleep in the burning bedroom...

Hadji Cheriff, a performer known for a variety of unusual abilities, demonstrates part of his act in the Thomas Edison studio. He has a large knife in his hand at the opening of the act. He then hurls the knife away and begins a rapid series of dance-like motions, executing numerous cartwheels and whirling movements.

"Down goes the Spanish flag, and up floats the Stars and Stripes. Down falls the symbol of tyranny and oppression that has ruled in the new world for four hundred years, and up goes the Banner of Freedom. In the distance are the turrets and battlements of Morro, the last foothold of Spain in America."

Uncle Sam is mistaken for Marion's uncle Sam.

Porter's sequential continuity editing links several shots to form a narrative of the famous fairy tale story of Jack and his magic beanstalk. Borrowing on cinematographic methods reminiscent of 'Georges Melies' , Porter uses animation, double exposure, and trick photography to illustrate the fairy's apparitions, Jack's dream, and the fast growing beanstalk.

Extremely condensed version of the Mark Twain story of a royal heir and his poor doppelganger trading places.

A woman being fitted for shoes exposes her ankle to the shoe clerk, who is intrigued. He kisses her, but her chaperone hits him with her umbrella.

Jack goes from business to business, trying to sell ad space in his newspaper. At each stop he catches the boss in a compromising position with a secretary. He writes an editorial about the practice, hinting that he could expose prominent businessmen. Suddenly everyone wants to buy ads in his paper.

Laura tells her companions at Miss Syntax's seminary that Jim, her sweetheart, is to visit her that afternoon. Shortly afterward, Jim climbs the fence surrounding the school playground, and after greeting the them girls, shows a copy of the "Grouch Chaser." The girls get a great laugh out of "Silas Bunkum's Boarders Picnic" in which Silas, his wife and their three guests spend a lively day in the country.

A portrait of the Dam family.