Watch Inventor Edison Sketched by World Artist

When J. Stuart Blackton appeared before Thomas Edison's camera (either at a make-shift roof-top studio in New York City or at the Black Maria studio in New Jersey), he performed several lightning sketches in exchange for a donation from the Vitascope Company to the New York World's Sick Babies' Fund. The only one of these to survive was his lightning sketch of Edison. It became such a popular hit that it convinced Blackton and his partner, Albert E. Smith, to enter the motion picture business themselves, resulting in the founding of Vitagraph in 1897.