Fred Ott
Frederick Paul Ott (1860; New Jersey – October 24, 1936; West Orange, New Jersey) was an employee of Thomas Edison's laboratory from the 1870s until Edison's death in 1931. His likeness appears in two of the earliest surviving motion pictures – the well-known Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (a.k.a. Fred Ott's Sneeze) and the little-seen Fred Ott Holding a Bird – both from 1894.[1]
The former became an icon of cinema itself. Shot in medium close-up, the film shows Ott seemingly taking a pinch of snuff causing him to sneeze. Comic in format, The Sneeze, as it also came to be known, was made in early January 1894 at the request of Harper's Weekly magazine, which requested illustrations for an article about the Kinetoscope.[2]
Ott began working with Edison in 1874 and joined him on a long-term basis in 1893 at a research facility in Manhattan where Ott and Edison worked on the creation of an electric street light. More of the work took place in the large Edison laboratory complex in West Orange, New Jersey. There Ott, alongside his brother John, worked with Edison on many inventions, retiring shortly after Edison's death in 1931.[3] Ott died at his home in West Orange, New Jersey on October 24, 1936.[4]
Filmography
- Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze (1894)
- Fred Ott Holding a Bird (1894)
- [Thomas Alva Edison--outtakes] (Fox Movietone News Story 5-537, recored in Fort Meyers, Florida, March 15, 1930) University of South Carolina Moving Image Research Collections, https://digital.tcl.sc.edu/digital/collection/MVTN/id/2409.
See also
- Fred Ott's Sneeze
- William Kennedy Laurie Dickson, 1860–1935, production
- History of film
- Kinetoscope
- 1894 in film
References
- ^ Charles Musser, Edison Motion Pictures, 1890-1900: An Annotated Filmography, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, 1997. Also Gordon Hendricks, "A New Look at an 'Old Sneeze'", Film Culture 22/23 (Summer 1961).
- ^ Paul Spehr, The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson (John Libbey Publishing, 2008), 324-25. Barnet Phillips, “The Record of a Sneeze,” Harper's Weekly, March 24, 1894, published 81 frames from the film. See also Luke McKernan's entry for Ott in Who's Who of Victorian Cinema (1996) accessed Aug. 15, 2022.
- ^ "A Brief Biography of Thomas Edison", Edison National Historical Park website, U.S. National Park Service, last updated Feb. 26, 2015. Accessed Aug. 15, 2022.
- ^ "Frederick P. Ott, Edison Aide, Dies; Became Associated With the Inventor in 1874, Working in Small Newark Plant, Assisted In Film Work Collaborated in Development of Motion Pictures, Electric Light and Phonograph", The New York Times, October 25, 1936. Accessed June 28, 2018. "West Orange, N. J,. Oct. 24. - Frederick P. Ott, for many years an associate of Thomas A. Edison and who worked with the late inventor in the development of the electric light, the phonograph and motion pictures, died at his home here today." See also "Ott, First Screen Actor, Dies at 76," Motion Picture Herald, Oct. 31, 1936, p. 34.
External links
Media related to Fred Ott at Wikimedia Commons- Fred Ott at IMDb
- Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7, 1894, Library of Congress
- Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze at IMDb
- Fred Ott Holding a Bird at IMDb
- Fred Ott's Sneeze through the Ages (Gary M. Atkins, 1979) 18 min. a.k.a. Variations on a Theme: Fred Ott's Sneeze through the Ages Super 8 film produced in Columbia, South Carolina
- Ott - A Modern Day Remake of Fred Ott's Sneeze, in Idea: A Remake of “Fred Ott’s Sneeze," (May 1, 2006) at Ironic Sans. Flash video no longer online; static archive page of Ironic Sans blog.
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