What was the nickname of Thomas Edison’s first motion-picture studio?

Thomas Edison’s first motion-picture studio was nicknamed the Black Maria.

Built at Edison’s West Orange laboratory in New Jersey in 1893, the Black Maria was an early film-production building designed for Edison’s Kinetograph camera. Its roof could open, and the structure could rotate so filmmakers could make better use of available sunlight.

The name came from a slang term for a police wagon, apparently because the building’s dark, cramped appearance reminded observers of one. The studio produced short films for viewing with Edison’s Kinetoscope, a peep-show device intended for one viewer at a time.

The Black Maria was not a conventional modern film studio. It was a specialized experimental space, and its reliance on sunlight shows how early filmmaking depended on practical engineering as much as on cameras and performers.