Events

• W.K. Laurie Dickson supervises the construction of the first movie studio called the "Black Maria" in West Orange, New Jersey which produces many of the early Kinetoscope short films of the 1890s later seen in Penny Arcades the following year after the studio is completed.
• March - W.K. Laurie Dickson , an assistant to Thomas Edison, successfully develops a working prototypse of the Kinetoscope.
• May 20 - First public display of Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope as Dickson Greeting, the worlds first motion picture, is shown at Edison's Laboratory for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs in West Orange, New Jersey.
• August 24 - Thomas Edison patents the motion picture camera. (which he receives in 1897).

Births

• February 9 - Ronald Colman, actor (d. 1958)
• March 6 - Victor Kilian , actor (d. 1979)
• March 8 - Sam Jaffe, actor (d. 1984)
• April 2 - Jack Buchanan, director, writer, and actor (d. 1957)
• April 10 - Tim McCoy, cowboy actor, soldier
• April 15 – Wallace Reid, actor (d. 1923)
• April 23 - Sergei Prokofiev, composer (d. 1953)
• May 13 - Fritz Rasp , actor (d. 1976)
• July 23 - Harry Cohn, Co-Founder of CBS Sales Association (Columbia Pictures)
• November 10 - Philip Sainton , composer