While Thomas Edison had a well-deserved reputation for taking credit for, and patenting, the work of others, there is no record that he ever laid claim to one of his greatest inventions. Nor that he wanted to.

Thomas Edison invented Hollywood.

I’m not talking about the movie camera or the kinetoscope or any of the myriad devices that made moviemaking possible. I’m talking about Hollywood—the town, the industry, and the mythology.

Were I a romanticist, I might believe aspiring filmmakers were given a westward nudge by Edwin S. Porter’s 1903 film The Great Train Robbery.

Porter shot much of the film in New Jersey, along the tracks of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad. It’s easy to imagine filmmakers watching Porter’s film and dreaming about loading a train with a camera and crew themselves. But in their dreams, instead of stopping to make a movie they traveled as far as the rails would take them.

And as far from Edison as they could get.

At the turn of the 20th century, Edison wasn’t a man with a camera, he was a man with camera patents. And patents for projection equipment, as well. Filmmakers couldn’t make a film without Edison’s blessing, nor could distributors show it.

Even before Hollywood, everybody wanted to direct.

In 1908 Edison convinced lesser patent holders to join him in the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), more commonly known as the Edison Trust. Once Edison persuaded George Eastman to join the MPPC—making it difficult for independent filmmakers to buy raw film stock—Edison’s control over the film industry was virtually absolute.

Working through the MPPC, he had no problem suing anyone who violated his patents or conditions. And the MPPC set forth more conditions than a movie mogul’s prenup.

It decreed a uniform movie admission price independent of the cost of the film; it banned movie stars’ names from the credits (to prevent actors from achieving celebrity status and demanding more money); it blocked film imports; and it limited the length of a film to no more than 20 minutes, based solely on a subjective assumption of audiences’ attention spans.

If the threat of a hefty fine didn’t encourage independent filmmakers to submit to the MPPC’s will, Edison made use of mob muscle to provide that extra ounce of motivation.

When his straight-out-of-central-casting thugs weren’t seizing “pirate” films, they were evicting audiences from renegade theaters, destroying filmmaking equipment, and trashing the sets used by rogue filmmakers.

You didn’t have to be a John Anderton to see the writing on the wall.

Suing filmmakers who worked in New York City, a carriage ride away from his Menlo Park, New Jersey laboratory, was easy. But the further away those filmmakers were the harder it became for Edison to exercise his power.

Independents took to the land and sea, traveling south and west to put distance between themselves and the great Northeast.

Although Florida and Cuba became home to some film expatriates, the ability to avoid Edison’s phalanx of attorneys, the pleasant weather, the sunnier days, and the range of scenery—from the mountains to the shore—apparently tipped the scales in California’s favor.

Carl Laemmle, Cecil B. DeMille, William Fox, and many others found their Shangri-La among the orange groves that would be known as Hollywood.

Today, it’s easy to spend a sunny afternoon walking past the results of Edison’s greed or ego—perhaps both—run amok.

From the former Essanay film studios on Sunset Boulevard, now the property of The Church of Scientology, one can stroll east through Los Feliz to the Prospect Studios, the original home of Vitagraph.

The William Fox Studio, at the corner of North Western and Fernwood Avenues (now a construction site), sits between Vitagraph and Larchmont Village. Buster Keaton filmed many scenes for Sherlock, Jr., along Larchmont and Beverly Boulevards, a short walk from Lillian Way where he had his studio. Further west, at La Brea and Sunset, The Jim Hensen Company Lot occupies what used to be Charlie Chaplin’s film headquarters.

The courts put an end to the Edison Trust in 1912, but few filmmakers looked back. As Hollywood prospered, the studios left in New York withered away (although some found second lives as sound stages for TV sitcoms).

Looking at the historical record, I wouldn’t give Edison sole credit for inventing motion pictures, but there’s no doubt in my mind he single-handedly got the pictures to move.