Edwin Stanton Porter was an American film pioneer, most famous as a producer, director, studio manager and cinematographer with the Edison Manufacturing Company and the Famous Players Film Company. Of over 250 films created by Porter, his most important include What Happened on Twenty-third Street, New York City (1901), Jack and the Beanstalk (1902), Life of an American Fireman (1903), The Great Train Robbery (1903), The European Rest Cure (1904), The Kleptomaniac (1905), Life of a Cowboy (1906), Rescued from an Eagle's Nest (1908), and The Prisoner of Zenda (1913).

The Edison Manufacturing Company, originally registered as the United Edison Manufacturing Company and often known as simply the Edison Company, was organized by inventor and entrepreneur Thomas Edison and incorporated in New York City in May 1889. It succeeded the Edison United Manufacturing Company, founded in 1886 as a sales agency for the Edison Lamp Company, Edison Machine Works, and Bergmann & Company, which made electric lighting fixtures, sockets, and other accessories. In April 1894, the Edison laboratory's Kinetoscope operation, which was about to be commercialized, was brought under the Edison Company umbrella. In 1900, the United Edison Manufacturing Company was evidently succeeded by the New Jersey–incorporated Edison Manufacturing Company. The company's assets and operations were transferred to Thomas A. Edison, Inc. in 1911.