Kinetograph

Kinetograph, camera used to take a series of photographs of people or objects in motion, often considered to be the first motion-picture camera. The processed film was passed rapidly between a viewing lens and an electric incandescent lamp inside a device called the Kinetoscope, creating the illusion of a moving picture for the viewer.

Both Thomas Edison and W.K.L. Dickson, one of Edison’s technicians, are credited with inventing the Kinetograph in the 1890s, though Dickson performed the majority of the experimentation. Edison had hoped to create a visual accompaniment for his phonograph, an early record player, and even filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office in October 1888 to protect the future invention. He wrote, “I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear, which is the recording and reproduction of things in motion.” The synchronization of sound and film was eventually abandoned because of its extreme difficulty, but the introduction of the Kinetograph was vital to the progress of motion-picture technology.

Celluloid photographic film, a synthetic plastic made into thin transparent sheets and given a light-sensitive coating, was integral to the Kinetograph’s development. Cut to a width of 35 mm (1.4 inches), the film moved through the camera by means of a sprocket system designed by Dickson. The sprocket teeth engaged two rows of holes running the length of the film along its edges. The images, or frames, recorded on the film were each 25 mm (1 inch) wide by 19 mm (0.75 inch) high. The Kinetograph could accommodate up to 15 metres (50 feet) of film at a time and could record at a rate of about 40 frames per second. Once processed, the film was shown by using the Kinetoscope, another device developed chiefly by Dickson. It consisted of a film display mechanism inside a cabinet with a peephole cut into the top. Rather than projecting the images onto a screen (a development that came later), the Kinetoscope ran the film between an incandescent lamp and a magnifying lens, through which a single viewer, peering into the peephole, could watch the successive images. A slotted disk rotating between the film and the lens gave the viewer a momentary glimpse of each passing frame, which created a lifelike illusion of people and objects in motion. Thus, while the Kinetograph captured motion, the Kinetoscope allowed people to view such motion.

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In the early 1890s Edison, Dickson, and their team began constructing what is considered to be the first motion-picture studio. It was called the Black Maria, because it resembled a police patrol wagon, which was commonly denoted by that term. The single-room studio was covered with tar paper and built with a hole in the ceiling. Panels on the ceiling could be raised or lowered to admit more or less sunlight. The Black Maria was built on top of a turntable so that it could be rotated during the day, depending on the Sun’s position. Motion pictures produced in the Black Maria were displayed in Kinetoscopes in arcades and amusement parks and, eventually, in Kinetoscope parlours, the first of which opened in New York City in 1894.

One of the earliest films Dickson made while working for Edison was Edison Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze, January 7, 1894, also called Fred Ott’s Sneeze. The film captured Ott, a worker at Edison’s laboratory, sneezing for the camera. It is considered to be the first motion picture given legal status by copyright. When Dickson applied for the copyright in August 1893, he submitted a card bearing a single composite photograph of 45 frames from the motion picture. However, the movie was not shown as a movie until 1953, when the frames in the photograph were transferred to film.

Although the Black Maria moved around, the Kinetograph itself did not, as the camera weighed more than 450 kg (about 1,000 pounds). Because of this, most early Kinetograph films were shot in the studio. Many of the early subjects of these films were circus and vaudeville performers, such as strongman Eugen Sandow and acts from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Edison’s company eventually developed a more portable camera that could be used more easily to film scenes of everyday life and news events, such as U.S. Pres. William McKinley’s inauguration in 1897.

Although often credited as the inventor of motion pictures, Edison was not the first to create them. He later attempted to sue the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company—a rival firm cofounded by Dickson, who had left Edison’s company in 1895—for infringing on his patent for the Kinetograph. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in 1902 that Edison owned the rights only to the Kinetograph’s sprocket system, not to movie cameras in general. Furthermore, the court stated that Edison had not invented the motion picture at all but rather had built upon previous inventions, discoveries, and experiments, such as those by Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey, and Louis Le Prince.

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Further innovations in filmmaking and display quickly followed Edison’s Kinetograph and Kinetoscope. The Lumière brothers (Auguste and Louis) created the Cinématographe, which could be used to both shoot and project films as well as to make additional prints of them. They gave the first public demonstration of the device on December 28, 1895. Edison later acquired a projector himself—the Vitascope, invented by Thomas Armat.