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Although Eugene Lauste's name is known to students of early film, very few people know much about his career. This is despite a noble effort by film historian Merritt Crawford, who tried to stir interest in his career in the 1920s and 1930s, and the recent revival of interest in cinema's early years. It is unfortunate because his career began early and spanned the movies' formative years. Lauste began with Edison in 1888 and worked with several important pioneers in the USA, France and Britain, remaining active until World War I. A skilled machinist and an expert in electricity, he worked as a technician, cameraman and projectionist, designed, built and operated film production facilities, and, as an inventor, he contributed to the beginning of projected movies and made some of the earliest experiments in recording sound on film. He documented his work and left a remarkably rich collection of artifacts, documents, photographs and interviews. Much of this material is in the Photographic History Collection, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution and the Merritt Crawford Collection, Museum of Modern Art. These two collections are supplemented by extensive testimony in legal cases related to patents, particularly the patent for the Lathams' projector.
The lukewarm interest in Lauste's career may be the result of his long work as an assistant to others - Edison, Dickson, the Lathams and the Mutoscope Co.-and because his most important work, pioneer experimentation to record sound on film, was innovative but never a commercial success. His research took place years before Don Juan and The Jazz Singer and was known by technicians but not by the public or by film historians. Lauste's diffident personality and inability to communicate well in English contributed to his obscurity. Often exploited by others, Lauste avoided the spotlight and became increasingly suspicious of those interested in his work. His reserved personality contrasted sharply with several other pioneers whose flamboyant ways kept them in the public eye - Edison, Dickson, C. Francis Jenkins, Meliesand Birt Acres come to mind.
I became interested in Lauste's career through on going research into the career of W.K.L. Dickson who was Lauste's friend and frequent co-worker. In the process of gathering information on Dickson, I found Lauste's documentation invaluable and I acquired...