Why 'the Silver Screen'?
In 1898, the British film exhibitor Arthur Cheetham offered Londoners short reels of football matches "now shown on a new silver screen which brings the pictures out almost as well as electric light." Cheetham proudly called his innovation a Silvograph , but the American film industry didn't adopt it for over a decade. Edison A new, improved version was unveiled in 1909 on the US East Coast, where Edison had helped establish a nascent film industry. The Lyric Theatre in Smith St, New Jersey, was "equipped with a new patent silver-coated screen". Within a year, the Gem Theatre in North Dakota installed a new silver screen, " coated with aluminium or silver paint.... each picture stands out a great deal more distinctly than on the old screen." Silver symbol A silver screen became not only a technological upgrade but also a symbol of cinema's glamour. Vaudeville encouraged audience participation, but films seem to come from a more remote, luxuriou...