Kinetoscope
Designed as an arcade machine, the Kinetoscope was a cabinet into which a person could look through a peephole and watch pictures move. An electric motor moved a filmstrip to an eyepiece, where a slotted disc exposed the images to the viewer at a rate of approximately 40 frames per second. About 50 feet of film revolved on spools to produce a 30-second film. Although Thomas Edison was involved in many pursuits, he had a strong interest in photography and in 1887 first began work on pictures that appeared to move. In 1889, a series of pictures could be photographed and moved rapidly using George Eastman's celluloid camera film. Mechanic and inventor William Kennedy Laurie Dickson (1860-1937), assigned by Edison to the photography project, invented both a camera ( Kinetograph) to make perforated filmstrips using celluloid roll film and a machine to view them--the Kinetoscope. Both machines were patented under Edison's name, and it was not until the 1960s that Dickson received credit for his contribution to motion picture history. In 1893, Thomas Lombard, the promoter of Edison coin operated phonograph s, urged Edison to manufacture a coin operated Kinetoscope. Edison accepted the challenge and responded by manufacturing 25 Kinetoscopes, which operated for a nickel a view. These Kinetoscopes were placed in arcades next to phonographs. For his film making, Edison erected a wooden building in the yard of his West Orange, New Jersey, laboratory. Wanting to use only natural light, he constructed the building to swing on pivots.
The stage inside could follow the sun, the light of which entered the studio through a special opening in the roof. The building was covered with black tar paper and painted black inside to minimize reflections. Edison's staff soon called the studio the Black Maria. In 1894, Edison opened the Kinetoscope Parlor in New York City, where he had two rows of peep-show machines. He played bits of vaudeville acts and some homemade moving pictures. A man sneezing, an Italian organ grinder and his monkey, a dancer, and a man smoking a cigar were among his first film subjects. In early 1893, Norman C. Raff and Frank R. Gammon created the Kinetoscope Company and purchased a large number of his peep shows at $200 each to be exhibited in kinetoscopic parlors. The contract price included the film and the coin operation boxes. The kinetoscopic parlors enjoyed only marginal success for viewers wanted longer films than the one-minute Kinetoscope shows. The answer was to eliminate the single-viewer concept and to project longer shows on a large screen for many to enjoy. In effect, the Kinetoscope's failure was a primary contributor to the birth of the large screen motion picture.
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