The first microfilm for which copyright was issued (4 photos + 1 video)

People love to capture important moments in life for themselves and their loved ones. And they’re not very important, they’re just making videos for fun or as a keepsake.





Meanwhile, the first film protected by copyright was something like this, meaningless nonsense. Namely, a five-second frame of a sneeze. The 1894 silent film, directed by William C. L. Dixon, was created using Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope and was simply called Fred Ott's Sneeze.



Fred Ott was one of Edison's assistants and had a penchant for loud, impressive sneezes. When Edison was experimenting with his new machine, he hired Ott to stand in front of the lens.

As they wrote in an article in 1908, he initially protested, but was forced to yield. And with the help of some means known only to himself (most likely it was a pinch of snuff), he was able to go through all the grimaces of a real high-quality sneeze while the camera clicked at a speed of fifty pictures per second.





Before 1912, copyright laws had no provisions for films, so Edison and others provided photographs with each frame credited.

Ott also starred in Fred Ott Holds a Bird (also 1894) and The Kiss (1900). Both films demonstrated exactly what their titles suggest.



In 2015, the Library of Congress selected Fred Ott's The Sneeze for inclusion in the National Film Registry, along with Ghostbusters, The Shawshank Redemption and Top Gun.