Richmond (/ˈrɪtʃmənd/) is a city in eastern Wayne County, Indiana, United States.

In 1806 the first European Americans in the area, Quaker families from the state of North Carolina, settled along the East Fork of the Whitewater River.

This was part of a general westward migration in the early decades after the American Revolution.

[9] Early cinema and television pioneer Charles Francis Jenkins grew up on a farm north of Richmond, where he began inventing useful gadgets.

As the Richmond Telegram reported, on June 6, 1894, Jenkins gathered his family, friends and newsmen at his cousin's jewelry store in downtown Richmond and projected a filmed motion picture for the first time in front of an audience.

The motion picture was of a vaudeville entertainer performing a butterfly dance, which Jenkins had filmed himself.

Jenkins filed for a patent for the Phantoscope projector in November 1894 and it was issued in March 1895.

A modified version of the Phantoscope was later sold to Thomas Edison, who named it Edison's Vitascope and began projecting motion pictures in New York City vaudeville theaters, raising the curtain on American cinema.

Joseph E. Maddy is credited with founding the country's first complete high school orchestra at Richmond, and later founded the National High School Orchestra Camp, which became the Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.

Famed trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong was first recorded at Gennett as a member of King Oliver and his Creole Jazz Band.

[12] Many other internationally famous musicians recorded at Gennett's Richmond facility, including Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller.

[16] Many consider the most significant painting in the collection to be a self-portrait of Indiana-born William Merritt Chase.

The Davis Aircraft Co.,[22][23] builder of a light parasol wing monoplane, operated in Richmond beginning in 1929.

After starting out in nearby Union City, Wayne Agricultural Works moved to Richmond.

Wayne manufactured horse-drawn vehicles, including the "kid hack", a precursor of the motorized school bus.

Among the automobiles locally manufactured were the Richmond, built by the Wayne Works; the "Rodefeld"; the Davis; the Pilot; the Westcott; and the Crosley.

[25] On April 6, 1968, an explosion triggered by a natural gas leak destroyed or damaged several downtown blocks and killed 41 people; more than 150 were injured.

[26] The event is documented in the book Death in a Sunny Street: The Civil Defense Story of the Richmond, Indiana Disaster, April 6, 1968, compiled by Esther Kellner.

[27] Richmond is located about 12 miles S of Hoosier Hill, the highest point in Indiana.

In 2003, a book entitled Richmond Indiana: Its Physical Development and Aesthetic Heritage to 1920 by Cornell University architectural historians, Michael and Mary Raddant Tomlan, was published by the Indiana Historical Society.

Local architects of note include John A. Hasecoster, William S. Kaufman and Stephen O. Yates.

Area NPR radio stations include WBSH in Hagerstown, Indiana, and WMUB in Oxford, Ohio.