Kinetoscope

Kinetoscope

Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device that was designed for individual viewing through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. It was not a movie projector, but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video. It created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. A process using roll film was first described in a patent application submitted in France and the U.S. by French inventor Louis Le Prince. The concept was also used by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1889, and subsequently developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments. This device was first shown publicly in 1893 and the following year the first Kinetoscope parlor was opened in New York. Kinetoscopes were designed for public operation. The machines were coin-operated and showed short films, typically of athletes, dancers, and other performers. The machines were often set up in rows, each showing a unique film. This design would influence the development of arcade games decades later. Kinetoscope production ended in 1896 as Edison changed his focus to the Projecting Kinetoscope, which showed films to large audiences. Many companies made their own versions of the Kinetoscope to avoid Edison's patents. The Mutoscope and Kinora were later forms of the Kinetoscope that printed each frame of the film onto individual cards that could be flipped like pages in a book and were cheaper and easier to use. The Kinetoscope started the motion picture revolution and influenced the development of movie theaters. Kinetoscopes were used in cities around the world and had a major impact on popular culture. However, the quickly improving art and technology of projected films soon made the Kinetoscope obsolete. The last Kinetoscope was produced in 1914. In 1996, the Library of Congress had a Kinetoscope film of Fred Ott sneezing from 1894 inducted into the National Film Registry.

early cinema, motion pictures, peep show, coin-operated, arcade games, film history, Edison, Dickson, Mutoscope

— John Armstrong