It is the first known film with live-recorded sound and appears to be the first motion picture made for the Kinetophone, the proto-sound-film system developed by Dickson and Thomas Edison.

(The Kinetophone, consisting of a Kinetoscope accompanied by a cylinder-playing phonograph, was not a true sound-film system, for there was no attempt to synchronize picture and sound throughout playback.)

A soundless 35mm nitrate print of the movie, described as precisely forty feet long, was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art and transferred to safety film in 1942.

The soundtrack was inventoried at the Edison National Historic Site in the early 1960s when a wax cylinder in a metal canister labeled "Dickson—Violin by W.K.L.

In 1964, researchers opened the canister only to find that the cylinder was broken in two; that year, as well, all nitrate film materials remaining at the facility were removed to the Library of Congress for conservation.

[7] This version was projected on a 20' screen at the Edison National Historic Site on June 1, 2002, as part of the Black Maria Film Festival.

[9] Yet there is still a difference of more than a second between the maximum potential running time at that speed and the actual duration of the film as digitized by Murch.

That 17-second running time works out to an average camera speed of approximately 37.5 fps, a significant difference from Murch's report.

Given the lyrics of the song Dickson plays, which describes life at sea without women, it is more plausible that he intended a joke about the virtually all-male environment of the Black Maria.

Ion Martea, in his May 19, 2006, essay on the film Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine for the Culture Wars website, claims erroneously that the music Dickson plays is "an excerpt from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana."

As the shot continues the woman's full-length skirt rises, and the audience gets a good view of her stockinged calf.