In the late 1880’s, inventor Thomas Edison turned to focus his laboratories on the development of motion pictures. He instructed his employee Dickson to construct a device for recording onto film and another machine to view such recordings. The product was Dickson’s camera, the Kinetograph, and a viewing machine, the Kinetoscope.

The Kinetograph had an electric motor that moved the roll of film past the camera lens. It included a mechanism that was linked to the shutter so that it stopped the film roll for each exposure, called frames. One person could only view the Kinetoscope at a time. It functioned similarly to the Kinetograph, except that light illuminated the frames to be viewed by a small window.

Although the thought of having motion pictures being shown to a larger audience never crossed Edison nor Dickson’s minds, further developments by other inventors made this possible with projectors. Today, movie theaters around the world are packed with people watching the latest movies on the silver screen. The invention of Edison and Dickson has sparked a multi-million dollar industry that continues to grow.

*Picture from Encarta Encyclopedia

"History of Motion Pictures". Microsoft Encarta Electronic Encyclopedia Edition 2002.

• This article gives a lot of background information regarding the development of the motion picture.