'Gugusse and the Automaton'

From Kottke:

.................................

The Library of Congress recently discovered a copy of a "long-lost film made in approximately 1897 by George Méliès called "Gugusse and the Automaton" (Gugusse et l'Automate), which "had not been seen by anyone in likely more than a century" and "was the first appearance on film of what might be called a robot." It's also one of the first science fiction films ever made.

Up top is a digitized copy of the entire 45-seconds-long film.

How the film was discovered:

Bill McFarland, who found the film, drove the entire box of films in which he found it from his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan to the Library of Congress's National Audio-Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia, to have the cache evaluated.

His great-grandfather, William Delisle Frisbee, had been a potato farmer and schoolteacher in western Pennsylvania by day, but by night he was a traveling showman. He drove his horse and buggy from town to town to dazzle the locals with a projector and some of the world's first moving pictures.

He set up shop in a local schoolroom, church, lodge, or civic auditorium and showed magic lantern slides and short films with accompanied by music from a newfangled phonograph. It shocked the viewers.

"They must have been thrilled," McFarland said. "They must have been out of their minds to see this motion picture and hear the Edison phonograph."