Lyman Hakes Howe (June 6, 1856 = January 30, 1923) was an American entertainer, motion picture exhibitor and early filmmaker. He entered the entertainment industry in 1883, and began touring with a phonograph in 1890. He showed his first movies in 1896. He was the first person to use a

phonograph A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

for background sound effects in movies.

Early life and education

Howe was born in

Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania Wilkes-Barre ( or ) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in th ...

to Nathan Howe, a building contractor, and Margaret Robins (Howe)––the youngest of their eight children. He attended Wyoming Academy, a secondary preparatory and business school, for two years and then started a business as a house and sign painter with a friend. He soon became a traveling salesman. After his father's death and the 1873 financial panic left the family near bankruptcy, he became a brakeman for the

Central Railroad of New Jersey The Central Railroad of New Jersey, also known as the Jersey Central or Jersey Central Lines , was a Class I railroad with origins in the 1830s. It was absorbed into Conrail in April 1976 along with several other prominent bankrupt railroads of ...

Career

Early career

In 1883, Howe entered the

entertainment industry Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have dev ...

with Robert M. Colborn. The partners bought a miniature working model of a

coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

and showed it in Pennsylvania towns and Baltimore's Masonic Temple, where it did little business. Howe bought out his partner's share and made arrangements to exhibit the miniature during the summer months at Glen Onoko in Mauch Chunk (now

Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania Jim Thorpe is a borough and the county seat of Carbon County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. It is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is historically known as the burial site of Native American sports legend Jim Thorpe. Jim Thorpe is loc ...

). It was a part-time career. In the winter months he returned to his earlier work as a painter. In 1890, he and a Mr. Haddock bought a

, which they demonstrated to the people of northeastern Pennsylvania, opening in Scranton on March 10, 1890. He exhibited the miniature coal breaker that summer but returned to giving phonograph concerts in the fall, this time without his partner. He sold the model coal mine and for the next several years toured with the phonograph. During this time, he began styling himself as "Professor" or "Lecturer". Howe was among the first to give full-length phonograph concerts.

Film career

During the 1890s, Howe attempted to acquire a

kinetoscope The Kinetoscope is an precursors of film, early motion picture exhibition device, designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector, but it introduced the basic ...

from

Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventio ...

, but was unsuccessful in doing so. In 1896, he attempted to lease a

vitascope Vitascope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins' patented Phantoscope, which cast images via film and electric light onto a wall or screen. The Vi ...

from

Raff & Gammon Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon were two American businessmen who were known for distributing and promoting some of the Edison Studio films, and founding their own business, which was called The Kinetoscope Company. History Kinetoscope c ...

, but was again unsuccessful. He thus created his own projector, the animotiscope with the help of an electrician. The animotiscope improved on previous motion picture projectors by incorporating a second take-up

reel A reel is an object around which a length of another material (usually long and flexible) is wound for storage (usually hose are wound around a reel). Generally a reel has a cylindrical core (known as a '' spool'') with flanges around the en ...

, allowing for the showing of longer films. Howe showed his first movie in Wilkes-Barre in December 1896. This movie was based on some of Thomas Edison's films and incorporated a phonograph for

sound effect A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. Traditi ...

s. Howe continued to show films, most of which were

newsreel A newsreel is a form of short documentary film, containing news stories and items of topical interest, that was prevalent between the 1910s and the mid 1970s. Typically presented in a cinema, newsreels were a source of current affairs, informa ...

s, local movies, and

travelogue Travelogue may refer to: Genres * Travel literature, a record of the experiences of an author travelling * Travel documentary A travel documentary is a documentary film, television program, or online series that describes travel in general or t ...

s. There was a time when he used both the phonograph and his movies during his shows, but he eventually concentrated mostly on movies. He was creating his own travelogues and newsreels by 1901. He was also the first person to incorporate backstage sound effects in his movies. Howe's movies were well received by the public. Venues were often filled when he showed his movie. By 1903, he controlled six traveling movie companies based in Wilkes-Barre. Although most of his competitors went out of business with the rise of nickelodeons around 1905, Howe's film company continued to operate, primarily focusing on large cities. Howe, along with

Burton Holmes Elias Burton Holmes (1870–1958) was an American traveler, photographer and filmmaker, who coined the term "Travel literature, travelogue". Travel stories, slide shows, and motion pictures were all in existence before Holmes began his career, ...

and

Fred Niblo Fred Niblo (born Frederick Liedtke; January 6, 1874 – November 11, 1948) was an American pioneer film actor, director and producer. Biography He was born Frederick Liedtke (several sources give "Frederico Nobile", apparently erroneously) in Yo ...

, was invited to participate in the

Motion Picture Patents Company The Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC, also known as the Edison Trust), founded in December 1908 and terminated seven years later in 1915 after conflicts within the industry, was a trust of all the major US film companies and local foreign-bran ...

in October 1909. From 1912 to 1919, he was active in the United States and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. In the 1910s, Howe made films about the industry, and made

war film War film is a film genre concerned with warfare, typically about naval, air, or land battles, with combat scenes central to the drama. It has been strongly associated with the 20th century. The fateful nature of battle scenes means that war fi ...

s during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Howe was involved in making films from a flying airplane as early as 1911. One of Howe's films was ''Lyman H. Howe's Famous Ride on a Runaway Train'', which was made in 1921. It was filmed from a moving train on a steep slope, producing a vertiginous affect, which influenced ''

This Is Cinerama ''This Is Cinerama'' is a 1952 American documentary film directed by Mike Todd, Michael Todd, Jr., Walter A. Thompson and Fred Rickey and starring Lowell Thomas. It is designed to introduce the widescreen process Cinerama, which broadens the as ...

''. From 1922 to 1929, Howe produced a cartoon series called ''Hodge Podge''. Howe's circuit has been described as "quasi-

Chautauqua Chautauqua ( ) was an adult education and social movement in the United States, highly popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Chautauqua assemblies expanded and spread throughout rural America until the mid-1920s. The Chautauqua bro ...

". Howe termed his films "high class" films. Specific examples of topics of his movies included the

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

and the wedding of King Alfonso XIII of Spain. He also filmed the United States President

Theodore Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...

's visit to Wilkes-Barre in 1905.

Other work

Howe trained the showman Edwin J. Hadley.

Death and legacy

Howe died on January 30, 1923, at the age of 66. His company continued to operate as a film laboratory after his death and into the 1930s, during which time it produced

short film A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

s about the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

. A Pennsylvania state historical marker in Howe's honor was dedicated on September 18, 2000 in Wilkes=Barre, where he was born and spent most of his life. In the 2010s, Howe's 1921 film ''Lyman H. Howe's Famous Ride on a Runaway Train'' turned up in the

New Zealand Film Archive The New Zealand Film Archive was established in 1981. On 1 August 2014 the archive was amalgamated with Sound Archives Ngā Taonga Kōrero and the Television New Zealand Archive to form Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision. 2009 lost film recovery In earl ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Howe, Lyman Hakes 1856 births 1923 deaths American entertainers People from Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Film directors from Pennsylvania