Skioptikonbild med motiv från London med biografen Empire vid Leicester square.Bilden har förvarats i kartong märkt: ?

The Grand Tour of Europe was the 17th- and 18th-century custom of a traditional trip of Europe undertaken by upper-class young European men when they had come of age (about 21 years old). A Grand Tour could last anywhere from several months to several years. The tradition declined as enthusiasm for neo-classical culture waned, and with the advent of accessible rail and steamship travel, however, lengthy travel tours of Europe had become a regular feature of the upper-class lifestyle in Northern and Central Europe and no more restricted to the higher nobility.

By 1908 there were 10,000 permanent movie theaters in the U.S. alone. For the first thirty years, movies were silent, accompanied by live musicians, sound effects, and narration. Until World War I, movie screens were dominated by French and Italian studios. During Great War, the American movie industry center, "Hollywood," became the number one in the world. By the 1920s, the U.S. was producing an average of 800 feature films annually, or 82% of the global total. Hollywood's system and its publicity method, the glamourous star system provided models for all movie industries. Efficient production organization enabled mass movie production and technical sophistication but not artistic expression. In 1915, in France, a group of filmmakers began experimenting with optical and pictorial effects as well as rhythmic editing which became known as French Impressionist Cinema. In Germany, dark, hallucinatory German Expressionism put internal states of mind onscreen and influenced the emerging horror genre. The Soviet cinema was the most radically innovative. In Spain, Luis Buñuel embraced abstract surrealism and pure aestheticism. And, just like that, at about its peak time, the silent cinema era ended in 1926-1928.