From his experience as a touring projectionist, Porter knew what pleased crowds, and he began by making trick films and comedies for Edison. During the next decade Porter became the most influential filmmaker in the United States. He collaborated with several other filmmakers, including George S.
Soon afterward he took charge of motion picture production at Edison's New York studios, operating the camera, directing the actors, and assembling the final print. Porter joined the Edison Manufacturing Company in November 1900. As an exhibitor, Porter had tremendous creative control over these programs, presenting a slate of films accompanied by a selection of music and live narration. While at Eden Musée, Porter worked assembling programs of Edison films, most particularly exhibitions of films of the Spanish–American War, Edison productions which helped stir an outbreak of patriotic fever in New York City. Returning to New York City in early 1898, Porter found work at the Eden Musée, a Manhattan wax museum and amusement hall which had become a center for motion picture exhibition and production and licensee of the Edison Manufacturing Company. He later made a second tour through Canada and the United States. He traveled through the West Indies and South America, showing films at fairgrounds and in open fields. He was briefly employed in New York City by Raff & Gammon, agents for the films and viewing equipment made by Thomas Edison, and then left to become a touring projectionist with a competing machine, Kuhn & Webster's Projectorscope. Porter entered motion picture work in 1896, the first year movies were commercially projected on large screens in the United States. During his three years' service he showed aptitude as an inventor of electrical devices to improve communications. He was employed initially in the electrical department of William Cramp & Sons, a Philadelphia ship and engine building company. He served three years as a gunner's mate, serving on the USS New York (ACR-2) and at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He filed for bankruptcy on June 15 and enlisted in the United States Navy four days later on June 19. Eventually becoming a merchant tailor, Porter was battered by the Panic of 1893. He developed an interest in electricity at a young age, and shared a patent at age 21 for a lamp regulator. After attending public schools in Connellsville, Porter worked, among other odd jobs, as an exhibition skater, a sign painter, and a telegraph operator. Named Edward at birth, he later changed his name to Edwin Stanton, after Edwin Stanton, the Democratic politician from Ohio who had served as Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of War. Porter was born and raised in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, to Thomas Richard Porter, a merchant, and Mary (Clark) Porter he was the fourth of seven children with four brothers (Chales W., Frank, John, and Everett Melbourne) and two sisters (Mary and Ada).
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