Owned by Thomas Edison, the Edison Manufacturing Company was America's first commercial film studio and the industry leader from 1894 to 1918. Its earliest films were shown on the Edison-invented kinetoscope, a freestanding device with a peephole through which individual viewers watched small moving pictures.

While their first productions were typically short films documenting current events, modern marvels, and comedic acts, the studio eventually developed large format, longer films that were projected in theaters. This included their 1903 production The Great Train Robbery. One of the first narrative films ever produced, it employed groundbreaking editing techniques such as cross-cutting to show simultaneous action in different locations. The studio also developed early stop-motion trick film methods to make objects appear to move on their own.