determination. I studied the situation on the market. To be frank with you, I applied for a license as a manufacturer, but was, of course, refused, as I then had no plant and may be said to have known nothing of the business. I have great respect for the Motion Picture Patents Company and appreciate what their protection means to the licensed manufacturer and to the moving picture business, but this was not helping me to realize my ambitions. So I set about seeing how I could make pictures without infringing upon patent rights… EDWIN THANHOUSER, The Moving Picture World, MARCH 12, 1910 There was no complicated sound equipment or microphones, no scripts, no unions, no stages and many times, no experience. The demand was so great with the rise of the independents trying to fill the void that it made it definitely worth the risk of avoiding legal problems. Films could be shot in a few days and it was like panning for gold. If you were good at it, you could strike it rich almost instantly. Documentation Documentation during the silent era is a historian’s nightmare. From an international view point, documentation of the silent era was almost completely reliant upon the company’s registration within the country archives (which was usually voluntary), historians (which primarily looked at the major companies or titles), preservation societies or film institutions (which were limited or non- existent) or the films themselves. So, massive amounts of production and distribution information have gone undocumented. Plagiarism was such a problem that European companies established offices in the U. S. primarily to try to stop or at least try to slow it down. Logos became one of the major tools used for both the production and distribution side to try to establish and protect territory and identity. Even though we are covering the world studios, let’s focus for a few minutes on the U. S., mainly because we have more statistics and documentation and can more easily present the situation. Unfortunately, most countries, from a research and documentation view point, are in WORSE shape than what we are presenting here. To get a better feel for how bad the situation really is in the U. S., the U. S. Congress commissioned David Pierce, a noted historian and archivist, to do a report. He did a phenomenal job and his report has been widely used. But,