This chronology will present some historical facts pertaining to the history of Hollywood, the global film industry and the evolution of entertainment products and technology such as television, cable TV, camcorders, plasma screens, video cell phones and media on demand.

• 1903 - The Great Train Robbery is filmed in New Jersey. It is written and directed by Edwin S. Porter, working for Thomas Edison. (More details later)
  
  
• 1910 - The Biograph Company sent film director D. W. Griffith and a team of actors to the Los Angeles area to create films because the locale was sunny and scenic, making it reliable for outdoor production.
  
  
• 1915 - Birth of a Nation, directed by D. W. Griffith, touched upon the topic of a black man accused of raping a white woman. The film glorified the Ku Klux Klan in the post-Civil War, leading to the group's massive and popular resurgence. It also acted as propaganda that denigrated and distorted African Americans and arguably increased social oppression of blacks significantly, especially in the south. By the 1920s, the KKK had a membership numbering three million and oppressive Jim Crow laws would eventually arise from the flames of racial hatred.
  
  
• circa 1918 - World War One caused European film studios to suffer financially. This helped set the stage for Hollywood to become the world's film capitol by the early 1920s.
  
  
• 1923 - Real estate speculators installed a sign in the foothills above Hollywood, hoping to sell more land. The sign said "Hollywoodland" and had fifty foot letters.
  
  
• 1927 - Warner Brothers released The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson, a mostly silent film that pioneered the use of sound in some of its scenes. "The talkies" were thus born.
  
  
• 1928 - Steamboat Willie became the first widely viewed animated film. It starred Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse.
  
  
• 1941 - America's entry into World War Two delayed the advent of television as a consumer product.
  
  
• 1945 - The last four letters of the famous Hollywoodland sign were permanently removed. Thereafter, the sign branded the town of Hollywood in the global consciousness as it became forever reproduced and glorified. World War Two ended with Japan's surrender in August.
  
  
• 1947 January 15 - The bisected body of 22 year old Elizabeth Short was found in Los Angeles. It is described as the most horrific murder ever in Los Angeles and is named the Black Dahlia murder.
  
  
• 1951 - Television exploded, becoming a must-have consumer product for the first time. The post-war American economy boomed largely because foreign industry had been bombed back into the stone age. The world thus depended on American products. This created decades of American prosperity that defined the baby boom and a thirst for home entertainment.
  
  
• 1969 August 9 - The Charles Manson family began their murder campaign. (details later).

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