The American Film Industry

2. The History of the Kinetoscope

The Novelty 2GORDON HENDRICKS The History of the Kinetoscope Early in 1894 there appeared in the American marketplace a peephole picture machine known as the Kinetoscope. It stood on the floor to a height of four feet. Through an eyepiece on the top a customer could, upon application of the coin of the realm, cause the machine to whirr briskly and show motion pictures ofdancing girls, performing animals, etc. The vast majority of these customers were enormously excited by the exhibition, came back again and again to see it, and told their friends about the new wonder. Some were impelled to build machines of their own; others, more significantly, devoted themselves to the task of projecting the pictures on a screen, so that many more than one viewer at a time could see the show. From the work of these latter came America's first projectors and the subsequent rich burgeoning of the industry in 1896 and afterward. The Kinetoscope was the source oftheir inspiration, and at the same time supplied them, by stimulating public interest, with a market. It must therefore be given more than a small share of credit for the beginnings of the American motion picture industry. By 1895, the Kinetoscope was losing its lustre, however, and the camera was beginning to furnish motion picture subjects for the screen. To West Orange, New Jersey, in 1887 came a young Scotsman, named W. K. L. Dickson, whose contribution to this work has been overshadowed by the illustriousness and aggressiveness of his emAdapted by the editor from The Kinetoscope: America's First Commercially Successful Motion Picture Exhibition (New York: Beginnings of American Film, 1966). 43 44 Part 1/ A Novelty Spawns Small Businesses, 1894-1908 pioyer, Thomas Alva Edison. Dickson was much interested in photography , and brought this interest-and the excellent facilities of the Edison laboratory-to bear upon the problem of a camera and the Kinetoscope. By the end of 1892 he had produced both.l The Kinetograph Camera The camera (named the Kinetograph) was the fountainhead from which flowed all West Orange motion pictures. Every subject known to us up to May 1896 was shot by this instrument-and many of those --------~--~----~----------, Shooting an Annabelle Serpentine dance in the Black Maria studio. From Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly, February 1895. The figure at the left is apparently meant to be Dickson. Note the "MB" in monogram at stage left (indicating a Maguire and Baucus production), the door at the left, the power line to the outside, the track for the camera, the counter on the camera, and the handle for starting and stopping the phonograph. 1. For an account of the development of the camera and Kinetoscope, see Gordon Hendricks, The Edison Motion Picture Myth (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1961). 2. Hendricks: The History of the Kinetoscope 45 afterward. It was probably with this camera that Edison reentered the motion-picture-taking business in the fall of 1896, and with its patent specifications tied up the whole industry for years. It is thus as important as any other camera in the history of the business. For all this significance, however, the details of its construction are not clear. Patent specifications are frequently ambiguous and conflicting claims profuse. Its average rate of taking pictures was thirty-eight to forty frames a second. [The sketch from Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly (February 1895), which is here reproduced and was first brought to public attention in The Kinetoscope, gives a good idea of at least the external appearance of the camera.-Ed.] The Kinetoscope The Kinetoscope's overall dimensions were 18/1 x 27" X 48/1, including the base and the eyepiece. A clear and authoritative description of the Kinetoscope's operation has been provided by Herman Casler in a lecture delivered around 1909 in Syracuse, New York: A ribbon oftransparent film carrying the pictures is laced up and down over idle spools at the lower part ofthe case. The ends ofthe film are joined, forming an endless band passing over two guide drums near the top of the case. One ofthese drums is driven by motor and feeds the film along by means ofsprocket teeth which engage with perforations along the edges of the film. Just above the film is a shutter wheel having five spokes and a very small rectangular opening in the rim directly over the film. An incandescent...