Thomas Armat

American inventor

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June 18, 2026

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Thomas Armat was an American inventor best known for patenting the Vitascope in 1895. This device was a significant advancement in motion-picture technology. The Vitascope incorporated key features still found in modern projectors, such as sprocketed film and a mechanism to briefly stop each frame before the lens. Thomas A. Edison adopted Armat's Vitascope to project films from his Kinetoscope. This development paved the way for the first Nickelodeon theaters and the eventual creation of full-length motion pictures.1

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motion-picture technology
History
…intermittent movement were devised by Thomas Armat in 1895 with a Pitman arm or “beater” movement taken from a French camera of 1893. The following year Armat agreed to allow Edison to produce the projectors in quantity and to market them as Edison Vitascopes. In 1897 Armat patented the first…
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…intermittent movement were devised by Thomas Armat in 1895 with a Pitman arm or “beater” movement taken from a French camera of 1893. The following year Armat agreed to allow Edison to produce the projectors in quantity and to market them as Edison Vitascopes. In 1897 Armat patented the first…
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Vitascope
motion-picture projector patented by Thomas Armat in 1895; its principal features are retained in the modern projector: sprocketed film operated with a mechanism (the “Maltese cross”) to stop each frame briefly before the lens, and a loop in the film to ease the strain. The Vitascope was adopted by…
Read More
motion-picture projector patented by Thomas Armat in 1895; its principal features are retained in the modern projector: sprocketed film operated with a mechanism (the “Maltese cross”) to stop each frame briefly before the lens, and a loop in the film to ease the strain. The Vitascope was adopted by…
Read More