Penny Arcade Mugs
Description: Alexander Lissiansky is the Engineer who invented the VoiceOGraph. On Dec. 31, 1940, Lissiansky, on behalf of Mutoscope, filed a US patent application to what we know as the VoiceOGraph. The manual for this first model is dated 1941, and the earliest surviving metal record is dated Feb. 1, 1941, perhaps dating the commercial introduction of the Voice-O-Graph in the US. The 1941 model included a walk-up configuration with a curtain. The microphone was a telephone handset, as it was in the Registon.
Description: The Biograph Company, also known as the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was a motion picture company founded in 1895 and active until 1916. It was the first company in the United States devoted entirely to film production and exhibition, and for two decades was one of the most prolific, releasing over 3000 short films and 12 feature films. During the height of silent film as a medium, Biograph was America's most prominent film studio and one of the most respected and influential studios worldwide, only rivaled by Germany's UFA, Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri and France's Pathé. The company was home to pioneering director D. W. Griffith and such actors as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, and Lionel Barrymore.
