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Originaire de Washington, Franck Zevely Maguire et sa famille vivent à Washington Ward 7 (recensement 1870). Dix ans plus (recensement 1880), il vit toujours ses parents et travaille dans le "Gov[ernment]. Printing Off[ice], probablement une imprimerie officielle. Il arrive En Angleterre, probablement en 1894, en représentation de Thomas Edison, et il inaugure, en octobre, des séances de kinetoscope à Londres :

THE KINETOSCOPE.
Mr. F. Z. Maguire, the representative of Mr. Edison in Europe, last evening received a largo number of visitors at a private view of Mr. Edison's latest invention, the kinetoscope, which was held at No. 70, Oxford-street. Mr. Edison has devoted four years to the experiments which have led to the completion of the kinetoscope, an instrument which by presenting a series of photographs in rapid succession gives a continuous picture of moving objects. Among the scenes represented in the apparatus last evening were a blacksmith's shop in which three men are at work, with all their movements as they strike the anvil realistically displayed, while the smoke from the furnace gradually ascends ; Carmencita, the celebrated Spanish dancer, executing her graceful evolutions ; Eertholdi, a female contortionist, going through her performance ; a bar-room fight, and a cock-fight. The photographs are exhibited at the rate of 2,000 a minute on a continuous celluloid film 45ft. long. The pictures, which are all perfect in themselves, are magnified in the machine and illuminated by the electric light. The present exhibition, however, does not represent the degree of perfection to which Mr. Edison promises to carry his invention, and it suffers by the smallness of the pictures and the want of clearly defined light and shade as well as by the inconvenience of looking down into the instrument. The inventor intends in future developments to throw moving pictures of life-size figures on a screen, and by the aid of a perfected phonograph which can reproduce every vibration of the violin to perpetuate the voices concurrently with the gestures of orators and actors, and even to show entire scenes from operas and plays, with all the speeches and songs as well as the movements of the performers. The instruments at present exhibited are offered to the public at the price of £70 apiece. They can, however, only be regarded as an amusing toy and as a preliminary to the greater achievements that are promised in the future. Probably an improvement may be effected by reducing the rapidity of the display, for it is recognised in the science of optics that the human eye is incapable of appreciating more than eight impressions in a second, while Professor Tyndall places the number at only seven.

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Morning Post, Londres, jeudi 18 octobre 1894, p. 5.

Associé à Joseph Baucus, il devient agent du phonographe Edison et ouvre le premier kinetoscope parlor à Londres (70, Oxford Street, 17/10/1894). Les deux hommes deviennent les agents officiels d'Edison pour la commercialisation du Kinetoscope en Europe.

Maguire and Baucus. Londres. c. 1896
Source: National Museum of Photography, Film & Television
Reproduit dans : Colin Harding and Simon Popple, In the Kingdom of Shadows, Londres, Cygnus Art, 1996, p. 15.

En 1897, ils s'associent avec Charles Urban et la société prend le nom de Warwick Trading Company. En février 1903, Charles Urban quitte la société pour fonder la Charles Urban Trading Company (20 juillet 1903).

1898: Départ: New York. Etruria. Arrivée: Liverpool. 6 août 1898.

1898: Départ: New York. Etruria. Arrivée: Liverpool. 10 décembre 1898.

1904: Départ : Southampton. Grosser Kurfurst. Arrivée: New York. 3 août 1904

1905: Départ: Liverpool. Oceanic. Arrivée: New York. 6 avril 1905.

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