The Photoplay

In 1893, a nickel bought half a minute of dancing girls or street boys fighting—seen by one person peering into Edison's little box. How did that private peep become a theater full of human passions?

As moving pictures grow from optical toys and brief peep-show clips into a popular art, Hugo Münsterberg asks what happens in the mind when we watch them. Writing in the early twentieth century, the psychologist traces inventions from the phenakistoscope to the projected screen, then turns from cinema’s machinery to its hold on perception and feeling. How can separate images become motion before our eyes—and how does a screen make imagined lives feel so immediate?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.