They were often featured at seaside locations, showing (usually) sequences of women undressing or acting as an artist's model. In Britain, they became known as "What the butler saw" machines, taking the name from one of the first and most famous softcore reels. Death His association with Biograph ended inexplicably in 1911. Dickson spent his last years quietly in his house in Twickenham, England. He died on September 28, 1935, at the age of 75. He died without being given credit for his contributions to the history of modern filmography. This omission was corrected by the exhaustive research of Gordon Hendricks and Paul Spehr who revealed the full extent of his contributions to many moving picture projects. Legacy Dickson was the first to direct and likely star in a film with live recording. In 1894, he directed The Dickson Experimental Sound Film. A man (likely Dickson) played "The Song of the Cabin Boy" on the violin into a megaphone used for a partially off-camera phonograph. The film was the first to use the Kinetophone, the first device used in the earliest sound films. Publications The Biograph in Battle (T. Fisher Unwin, London 1901). (reprinted Flicks Books, UK, 1995). History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kinetophonograph (with Antonia Dickson, MOMA Publications 2000 Facsimile of Dickson's own copy of the book published in 1895) An Authentic Life of Edison. The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison. (with Antonia Dickson, 8 volumes. New-York. Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. 1894) Timeline, the history of editing (John Buck 2018). (incl Dickson inventions)(Tablo Books ). See also The Dickson Experimental Sound Film Blacksmith Scene Fred Ott's Sneeze Edison's Black Maria List of people on stamps of the United States Eugene Lauste List of William Kennedy Dickson films References John Barnes, Filming the Boer War (Bishopsgate Press, UK, 1992) Eileen Bowser, The Transformation of Cinema, 1907–1915 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, 1990) Richard Brown and Barry Anthony, A Victorian Film Enterprise:The History of the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company (Flicks Books, UK,1997) Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: the American Screen to 1907 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, US, 1990) Charles Musser, Before the Nickelodeon: Edwin S Porter and the Edison Manufacturing Company (University of California Press, US, 1991) William and Antonia Dickson, History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope, and Kinetophonograph (MOMA Publications 2000 ) Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Arno Press, US, 1972) Ray Phillips, Edison's Kinetoscope