In 1902, to save money on a ten-minute film called The Life of an American Fireman, Edwin S. Porter began with a fireman dreaming of a woman and child in danger (conveyed by doule exposure), dissolved to a close-up of a fire alarm and a hand reaching into the frame to set it off, cut to stock footage of firemen bursting into action in the firehouse, then to an external shot of the fire engine racing to the scene, and ended with the fireman rescuing the mother and child about to be overcome by smoke. The audience was excited and delighted; nothing like this had ever been done before. Porter had invented editing, and with editing the modern form
— Wilden, Anthony. The Rules Are No Game: The Strategy of Communication. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987.
