The Kinetoscope was a forerunner of the modern movie projector developed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson during his employment with Thomas Edison.

According to the history Edison's idea for the Kinetoscope was inspired by a visit with Eadweard Muybridge in 1888. Muybridge had earlier developed an invention he called the Zoopraxiscope. Muybridge's intention seem to be to secure financing and a commitment for further collaboration with Edison and on an elaboration of this design that included the incorporation of the Edisn phonograph -- a device that would play sound and images concurrently. Edison, impressed and inspired by Muybridge's ideas, quickly and autonomonously filed a patent that would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear" and assigned the task of a new design to Laurie Dickson.

He decided to call "his" invention the Kinetoscope, combining the Greek root words "kineto" (movement), and "scopos" ("to view").

Edison, Dickson and the other employees of the Lab made progress on the design to a point. Their idea for spinning cylinders could only play very short animations, limited by the diameter of the cylinder. This stall in the project was reingivorated after Edison visited Etienne-Jules Marey, a French doctor and photographer who had developed a "chronophotographe" which used a strip of film which, of course, was much longer than the diameter of any useful cylinder.

John Carbutt's work on emulsion-coated celluloid film further progressed aims in this direction. William Heise incorporated this alongside Dickson at Edison's lab. Edison labs developed a new camera to use this film, the Kinetograph.

The film was designed as a loop, snaked around a series of spindles in a wooden box which was viewed by looking down into a window.

On May 20, 1891 the first public display of Thomas Alva Edison's prototype kinetoscope was shown at Edison's Laboratory for a convention of the National Federation of Women's Clubs.

The premiere of the completed Kinetoscope was held at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9, 1893.

See also

• History of cinema
• Lurline Baths

External link

Library of Congress; History of Edison Motion Pictures, the kinetoscope (http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/edhtml/edmvhist.html#O)

ja:キネトスコープ