"We may see and hear a whole Opera as perfectly as If actually present"
U.S. Patent Office description for the Kinetoscope
Motion pictures and even television may never have become a reality if it were not for the creation of the Kinetoscope by Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931) and his deputy William Dickson (1860-1935) in 1891. The idea of moving still frames in quick succession to give the illusion of a moving image had already been demonstrated. Edison and Dickson took the principle and built a machine that could show long rolls of film.
Edison was apparently inspired by a demonstration of the Zoopraxiscope, which used a fast-spinning disc with images around the outside to give the illusion of movement. Edison took it upon himself to develop a system that brought together moving images and sound; he called it the Kinetoscope. Edison set Dickson and his team to work on the project.
Edison and the team devised a system of printing images onto thin celluloid sheets cut into narrow rolls with perforated edges. Sprockets that engaged with the perforations enabled the rolls to be fed at a uniform speed in front of a lit bulb. A shutter would flash light through the "film" at just the right time so that each image was exposed for an instant. When all this was carried out at speed, the successive images gave the illusion of movement.
The final design of the Kinetoscope was unveiled in 1894 to great applause; the public was captivated by the invention. The initial peep-hole design of viewing led to the development of the projecting Kinetoscope. The work of Edison and his team led to the start of the motion picture industry, and entertainment was changed forever.
