Welcome	About	Introduction	Chapter One beginning of time – 999 AD
Chapter Two 1000 AD – 1399	Chapter Three 1400 – 1599	Chapter Four 1600 – 1649	Chapter Five 1650 – 1699
Chapter Six 1700 – 1749	Chapter Seven 1750 – 1799	Chapter Eight 1800 – 1819	Chapter Nine 1820 – 1829
Chapter Ten 1830 – 1839	Chapter Eleven 1840 – 1849	Chapter Twelve 1850 – 1859	Chapter Thirteen 1860 – 1869
Chapter Fourteen 1870 – 1879	Chapter Fifteen 1880 – 1884	Chapter Sixteen 1885 – 1889	Chapter Seventeen 1890 – 1894
Chapter Eighteen 1895 – 1899	Chapter Nineteen 1900 + post cinema	Chapter Twenty 1911 +	Copyright
HOTDOC Internet Archive Channel	HOTDOC X Channel	HOTDOC You Tube Channel

_{Period: 1890 – 1894}

Edison’s Kinetoscope used celluloid to show pictures moving across the viewing area, as opposed to individual photographs flipped in succession. Fifty-feet of film produced a 1 ½ minute movie.

Hermann Casler’s simple motion-picture viewing machine was a glorified Flip Book housed in a metal frame capable of flipping paper photographs in succession. The individual photographs were passed before the viewing area by a crank after a nickle was deposited. It was called the Mutoscope.

Both machines constituted the Nickel odeon. The parlours could now be opened.

From the pinhole image to the motion picture we have travelled. And with the move from paper strips to celluloid, the fluidity of motion on a screen was complete.

Now the studios could be built. And the paying customers came in the millions.

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going from the Nickelodeon to the makeshift movie house, was like going to the IMAX of the 1890s

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1890
PROFITABLE BUSINESS THOSE MAGIC LANTERNS
Illustrated catalogue of Magic Lanterns and lantern slides of American producer and vendor the McIntosh Battery and Optical Company in Chicago Illinois published in 1890. Pages 4 and 5.
READ it here at Internet Archive.

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THE ARGAND SCIOPTICON
Illustrated catalogue of Magic Lanterns and lantern slides of American producer and vendor the McIntosh Battery and Optical Company in Chicago Illinois published in 1890.  Pages 6 and 7.

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MCINTOSH SCIOPTICON № 2
Illustrated catalogue of Magic Lanterns and lantern slides of American producer and vendor the McIntosh Battery and Optical Company in Chicago Illinois published in 1890.  Pages 12 and 13.

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CHICAGO MODEL STEREOPTICON
Illustrated catalogue of Magic Lanterns and lantern slides of American producer and vendor the McIntosh Battery and Optical Company in Chicago Illinois published in 1890. Pages 18 and 19.

1890
THE PEDAGOGICAL LANTERN
F. BONHOURE AND J. MAGE
From around 1880 onwards, the use of the Magic Lantern in the classroom grew by leaps and bounds around the world. I have referred to some of these promoters previously however, another fine example are two men with first names hard to come by; F. Bonhoure and J. Mage.

_{Images History of Light Projections / Patrice Guerin}

Jointly, they publish L ’Enseignement by Light Projections which contained 220 pages with 128 tables showing 880 figures for the 19^th century projector. F. Bonhoure was an inspecteur primaire based in Paris, meaning he was a public school inspector with responsibilities over primary education. J. Mage is identified simply as a co-author alongside Bonhoure on the same work.

No other details on Mage’s background turned up, suggesting he too was likely an educator but didn’t publish extensively elsewhere.

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The book is written in accordance with the Official French Pedagogical Programme of Guidelines from 27 July 1882. It was aimed at young pupils or adults looking for a scientific education. My examples below are of human anatomy.

A thorough scientific education must be, above all, stated the authors according to a well-known pedagogical principle;

_{Images History of Light Projections / Patrice Guerin}

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There are at least three editions of this book: 1890, 1892 and 1895. A copy of the 1st edition was offered at the Pedagogical Museum in November 1890 and won a silver medal at the Avignon School Exhibition in 1891. Source: La revue pédagogique, volume 17, July – December 1890.

_{Image History of Light Projections / Patrice Guerin / La revue pédagogique, volume 17, July – December 1890}

1890s
THE THAUMATOGRAPH
OSKAR MESSTER (1866-1943)
The Thaumatograph was a commercial film projector developed in Germany and made by Oskar Messter’s firm (Ed. Messter / Messter-Projection) from the 1890s into the 1910s. It was a 35mm apparatus sold in a number of model versions over a number of years that used the standard intermittent / stop-frame mechanism (Maltese-cross / Geneva style) and a lamp-house for illumination.

Light was modulated by counter-rotating shutter blades to expose frames sequentially and prevent flicker. Film was guided and protected by slide rails to minimize wear and jamming. Additional safety features included pre- and post-wind reels, pressure rollers for tension, and a fireproof drum enclosure to mitigate nitrate film risks.

Messter’s line of Thaumatograph projectors became a standard German market model by the 1910s.

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Power came from hand-cranking or electric motors in later models, projecting at 16–24 frames per second onto screens via a condenser lens system. The apparatus is consistently referred to in trade literature and surviving catalogues as the Thaumatograph Model XI, Model XIV–XV, Model XVII up until 1914.

Contemporary descriptions and workshop literature describe heavy cast-iron tripod / stand construction and lamphouse-equipped projector bodies. Messter is explicitly credited with adopting / building projectors using this intermittent drive and with marketing heavy metal Thaumatograph bodies.

The Thaumatograph is seen in the Marque of a Fairground show.

Hopwood’s Living Pictures (1899) lists the device, and later trade catalogues, museum inventories and historical surveys identify Messter’s Thaumatograph in surviving collections and bibliographies.

Messter grew out of his father’s optical firm and began building projectors in 1896.

1890
HONOURABLE MENTION
LUDWIG FRIEDERIKE WILHELM HOFFMANN (c. 1850-post 1900)
THE KATOPTICUM
Hoffmann, sometimes credited simply as Prof. L. F. W. Hoffmann, was an Austrian physicist, inventor, and popular-science lecturer of his time. He was primarily known in the 1880s through 1890s as a designer of elegant philosophical toys and demonstration apparatuses for optics and physics, sold through scientific-instrument makers in Vienna and Berlin.

His most famous invention is the Katopticum, a hand-cranked mirror-and-pattern device that produced geometric animations of expanding stars, rotating spirals, and pulsating grids purely through reflection and rotation.

The Katopticum was marketed as both an entertaining parlour toy and a serious tool for teaching principles of symmetry, reflection, and visual persistence (Apparent Motion). The Katopticum, sometimes written as Katoptrikon, was a tabletop apparatus using a rotating wheel or cylinder with angled mirrors.

Popular in European science museums and parlours, it’s considered a bridge between static Kaleidoscopes and early film projectors. Its effects prefigure modern ‘op art’ and digital animations. Hoffmann belongs to that charming group of late 19th century inventor-educators who spanned the breach between serious optical science and the Victorian fascination with mesmerizing parlour illusions.

Today he is hardly remembered outside his realm of physics.

1890
ANIMATED PICTURES vs TORPEDOES
LOUIS BRENNAN (1852-1932)
Buried underneath his fame for building torpedoes, self-balancing monorails, gyrocopters and other military defense inventions, Brennan dabbled in animated pictures.

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Louis Brennan was an Irish-Australian mechanical engineer and inventor who held many British patents in the late 19th century. Several histories of early animated photography and moving pictures point to Brennan’s 18 February 1890 British patent BP № 2623 as a stroboscopic-type method for producing animated pictures.

Disturbingly, nothing more is documented.

Pictured is a scan of a picture of Brennan with one of his inventions found in the 1912 edition of Harmsworth Popular Science, published in the UK by Amalgamated Press.

He moved to Australia in 1861 and developed a coastal defense torpedo that he had patented in England in 1877. The War Office purchased it for £110,000. Suffice to say that he made no further efforts to promote or market his “animated images” from that point on.

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THE DAWN OF THE KINETOSCOPE

🎞️ Designed in 1890
🎞️ Built in 1891
🎞️ Debuted in 1894 (ladies only)

All by a Scottish man named William Kennedy Laurie Dickson. Nickelodeon’s were underway and this was Edison’s contribution. Take a quick 1:11 look at the inner workings. From Museu del Cinema.

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The human eye and brain can only process approximately twelve separate images per second, retaining an image for 1/14 of a second on the retina.

If a subsequent image is replaced during this time frame, an illusion of continuity is created. Aristotle referred to after-images in his writings.

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what’s interesting about Apparent Motion is that we don’t need a video or film to show us; a single photograph can explain everything

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WATCH an excellent video on POV called The Optical Illusion of Motion brought to you by studiobinder and posted at TED. It’s 5:12 long and explains it all.

1890s
THE RAYOSCOPE
The Rayoscope was either an early motion picture projection device, one of numerous similarly named apparatuses at the time we move into the post cinema era, or was simply a trade name used in the 1890s for a projection apparatus. The name was later reused by US firms that made opaque / micro-projectors in the 20th century.

Was the Rayoscope ever built? And by whom? Here’s what I have found.

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It is possible that the device mentioned as the Rayoscope in Hopwood’s text may have been a general term or an early, less-documented name for a device related to existing optical toys, or a model that did not gain widespread recognition.

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Associated with Thomas A. Edison (1847–1931), the American inventor whose company produced films and created early cameras and projection systems, I found the Rayoscope marketed as “Edison and Dow’s Rayoscope” for a specific 1896 exhibition. Dow refers to a Mr. Dow, an exhibitor or local operator rather than a co-inventor. No full name or biography is documented in surviving records that I have seen.

1890
THE HOT-AIR ACTUATED ZOETROPE
EDWIN BURBAGE PHILLIPS
HENRY COURTEEN
Patent No. 4978, 31 March, 1890. “Advertising Zoetrope rotated by hot air from lamp” and “Improvements in toys, shades, and advertising devices, and in methods of actuating the same.”

The Phillips and Courteen invention combined the optical principle of the Zoetrope with a simple thermal engine, creating a self-starting, and continuously moving animated display. The drawing would have shown the following key components assembled together:

The source of energy would be a common household light, typically an oil or gas lamp, positioned directly beneath the rotating mechanism. A lightweight structure, often made of thin metal or mica, with angled blades or vanes attached to the top of a vertical spindle.

The rising column of hot air from the lamp’s flame would strike these vanes, causing the spindle to rotate.

This mechanism is identical to the one found in Chinese “Trotting Horse Lanterns” which I have more than one series on in the first chapter.

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This would be mounted onto the rotating spindle, directly above the lamp. If intended as a rotating lampshade or advertising device, the exterior would display text or figures, perhaps visible only when backlit.

To achieve the animation effect, the cylinder would contain a strip of sequenced images (like a traditional zoetrope). Crucially, the sides of the cylinder would incorporate vertical viewing slits.

As the cylinder spun due to the lamp’s heat, the user would look through the slits at the pictures on the opposite inner wall.

The slits act as a stroboscopic shutter, momentarily freezing each sequential image in the user’s eye, creating the illusion that the images are moving. Imagine this dog in a pet shop window at 50% off to a good home.

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The genius of this Phillips-Courteen Advertising Zoetrope invention was its self-sufficiency for publicising purposes.

In 1890, this provided a way to generate an eye-catching, animated display for a storefront or public area that did not require manual cranking, expensive clockwork, or (at the time) early, unreliable electric motors.

The same item that provided light to the room simultaneously powered the commercial, producing a highly cost-effective and novel marketing implement. Darwinpasta @Darwinpasta on You Tube obtained this Zoetrope he calls a Zoetrope Lamp and began to restore it.

This is what may have looked like the Phillips-Courteen device. Imagine a product at 30% off in place of the dog.

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This pre cinema gizmo was displayed at the International Photographic Exhibition in Brussels July 1891. Anschütz was listed as a prizewinner. He also made smaller Schnellsehers for public an home use.

Right, the Electrical Tachyscope, seen in the Scientific American, 1 January 1889. It was capable of satisfying seven or eight people at a time.

A PRISTINE TRIUNIAL MAGIC LANTERN
An absolutely magnificent Triunial Magic Lantern made by the D. Noakes and Son firm in London c. 1890. Given the name Noakes Triple, it was made of mahogany and varnished copper and brass. Illumination was Oxy-hydrogen powered.

The most amazing pre cinema projectors were these three-lens beauties.

^{Images Antiq-Photo}

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The D. Noakes and Son Triunial Magic Lantern seen here is authenticated on patent as Nº 3 and would have been 3^rd off the factory line.

This Noakes Triple model has three single-draw rack and pinion lenses, each with a pivoting lens cap. This glorious projecting device is near pristine.

^{Images Antiq-Photo}

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The Noakes Triple Triunial lantern, has six doors, 2 handles, three projection lenses housed in varnished copper with dimensions of twenty-three inches long, eleven inches wide, thirty-four and a half inches high.

^{Images Antiq-Photo}

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Illumination was oxy-hydrogen fed. Noakes and Son were the inventors and patentee. They were the makers of exquisite Unial, Bi and Triunial Magic Lanterns, lime light apparatus, lantern slides all for Dissolving View presentations.

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With the advent of Cinema, the desire for projecting lanterns diminished. Noakes and Son were active for only seven years (1890-1897). This particular Triunial I have been showing, sits in the Antiq-Photo Gallery, Paris France.

THE MUSEUM of MODERN ART
THE IMAX OF THE 1890S / HOW TO SEE the First Movies
From MoMA, and hosted by historian David Kehr. When you go from the Nickelodeons to the big screen its like the IMAX of the 1890s. Runs eleven minutes.

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Here is a Panoramic view of Grande Place, Mons, Belgium taken by Jules Damoizeau in 1895 using his Cyclographe. It’s an Albumen silver print measuring 11 and 13/16 × 38 and 9/16 inches.

It resides in the Eastman Museum.

^{Image Eastman Museum}

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the Cyclographe turned on the tripod as the film was fed past the shutter in the opposite direction to the camera’s turning

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The Jules Damoizeau Cyclographe was a collapsible bellows-camera and contained a pointed punch which would strike and thereby identify each new exposure on the roll prior to its passing before a slit at the shutter.

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This is Fête de St. Cloud, côté gare Panorama by Jules Damoizeau in 1895 using his Cyclographe. An Albumen silver print 6 13/16 × 22 5/16 inches. At the Eastman Museum.

^{Image Eastman Museum}

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A 360° Panoramic view of Place du Ralliement in Angers, France by Jules Damoizeau in 1895 using his Cyclographe. A gelatin silver print 4 1/2 × 33 1/2 inches. At the Eastman Museum.

^{Image Eastman Museum}

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In 1894 Damoizeau developed a Panoramic Stereoscopic camera with twin-lenses, twin-spools and twin slits. Most Panoramic cameras provided a view of at least 110º, with some, like the Jules Damoizeau 1890 Cyclographe providing a full circle.

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Here, the Cyclographe’s coupled roll-film magazine. Image-James McCardle. 

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Frederick H. Varley, a London engineer who was a friend of Friese- Greene’s, patented the camera in 1890.

Here from The History of Movie Photography, by Brian Coe, (Westfield, New Jersey, Eastview Editions, 1981) on pp59 and 60 we read;

^{Read on a phone: tap and use ‘rotation’}

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Friese-Greene improved on the camera in 1893 with “Improvements in Apparatus for Exhibiting Panoramic, Dissolving, or Changing Views, and in the Manufacture of Slides for Use Therewith.”

From Brian Coe, pp59 and 60 photo of the camera and a schematic.

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Without film perforations the Friese-Greene and Varley Stereo Cine Camera was unworkable. It disappeared into history.

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Compare for yourself, if you think the drowning victim photo of the French Police (found and photographed in 1890) but forgotten until 2003, looks anything like that of Louis Aime Augustin Le Prince.

Here’s a comparison of the two photos.

LEARN more on this very very strange and puzzling story:

🎞️ The Missing Reel (1990) by Christopher Rawlence
🎞️ Histoire Comparée du Cinéma (1966) by Jaques Deslandes
🎞️ The First Film (2015) by Wilkinson/Shah
🎞️ The Man Who Invented Motion Pictures, Paul Fischer (2022)
🎞️ Or anything by Irfan Shah, and The Shadow Traps

1890s
FORGOTTEN CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY
ERNST KOHLRAUSCH (1850-1923)
In the 1890s, this mostly forgotten pioneer of the late pre cinema period made contributions to the development of Chronophotography that must be remembered as significant beneficence.

His first love being athletics blended in nicely with interest in body movements.

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Kohlrausch’s work ranks alongside Chronophotographers like Marey, Anschütz, Demenÿ, and Muybridge

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Ernst Kohlrausch was interested in merging his sequence-images of athletes into a representation of natural motion through projection, however his work is barely cited in contemporary professional photographic publications.

Below images from his backwards-flipping fellow.

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As per Stephen Herbert, here we see Kohlrausch’s camera with multiple glass lantern plates and wheel projector that had glass transparencies.

Period from between 1890-1895.

^{Image Stephen Herbert}

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this mostly forgotten pioneer of the late pre cinema period made contributions to the development of Chronophotography that must be remembered as significant beneficence

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White background: Kohlrausch’s second Chronophotographic projecting apparatus from 1895, a rear view showing twenty lenses and matching lantern slides (partly visible) on a double fixed ring, and a movable ‘arm’ behind it for introducing light.

Tan background: A front view of the same Kohlrausch projector.

^{Images The Deutsches Museum, Cornelia Kemp}

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In the UK the Monocle was often called the Magnascope. It would allow you to enlarge an image in order to observe it in all its details. It was said at the time that “monocles make it possible to see highly magnified and with relief, ordinary sights.”

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since ancient times, we have used a magnifying glass to improve the vision of small objects or certain details invisible to the naked eye

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This Projection Lantern producer originally emerged in France in 1892. He manufactured and sold a variety of models and types of lanterns from unis to triunials.

E. Mazo began selling Cinematographic Projectors in 1897. This image is from p171 of the 1910 catalogue.

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Pictured here is the Helios Lanterne de Projection from page 25 of the 1910 E. Mazo catalogue and also a photograph of the same lantern by Stéphane Dabrowski of the Cinémathèque Française.

^{Photograph Stéphane Dabrowski}

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Since ancient times, we have used a magnifying glass to improve the vision of small objects or certain details invisible to the naked eye. It’s the simplest optical instrument there is, consisting essentially of a convex glass lens of varying size.

1890S
THE SCENAMOTOGRAPH
GEORGE WILLIAM ‘DADDY’ GREEN
The Scenamotograph was built by George William “Daddy” Green and was one of several early motion picture projectors developed in Britain during the mid‑1890s, competing with all the other motion picture pioneers and their contraptions.

It was some pretty stiff competition and this is why it is not known of. In thirty-five years, I hadn’t heard of it until I recently stumbled upon it. Green was a British showman and inventor often nicknamed “Daddy Green.”

The Scenamotograph was an early projector for moving pictures, designed to show films to audiences in music halls and fairgrounds. That was it’s purpose, and at the time, multiple inventors across the world were now racing to perfect their motion picture systems.

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Green’s Scenamotograph was one of the British entries into this technological race. The Scenamotograph was part of the first wave of cinema projection systems, alongside the Cinématographe of the Lumière brothers, the Kinetoscope of Dickson and the Theatrograph / Animatograph of Robert Paul, just to name three.

Green’s invention is less remembered today because so many other devices became more commercially successful and widely adopted, and sooner. Green was too late in the race. Nonetheless, the Scenamotograph represents Britain’s early contribution to the birth of cinema.

Unlike these other machines, Green’s projector did not achieve widespread use. It was made for the Fairground, and it stayed in the Fairground. Much of Green’s work survives only in specialist cinema history texts, making the Scenamotograph less familiar to general audiences.

The Scenamotograph was built by George William Green in 1895, marking one of Britain’s early steps into motion picture projection, though it was quickly overshadowed by more successful systems.

Glasgow-based Fairground and cinema theatre pioneer George William Green was the son of a master cabinet maker, but George Green started his career as an apprentice watch-maker coming into ownership of a Fairground carousel through a bad debt owed to his father.

From that, he developed a number of travelling shows based in Glasgow, and gave his first public film show during the Christmas season of 1896 at ‘The Carnival,’ a venue he owned and ran in the city, using a machine obtained from Robert Paul, the Theatrograph which he had purchased in the late summer of 1896.

However, the Scenamotograph did earn some travel miles because it wasn’t until 1898 when the Paul Theatrograph was introduced at the Fairs. Now, the production of a projector by Green, and then the use of another’s device must be addressed.

My thinking is that Green knew early on that his Scenamotograph could not compete with superior apparatuses like the Theatrograph. And in order to continue operating a series of Fairground programs, he had a decision to make. And on that note, we have not one idea of how the Scenamotograph looked.

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For a comprehensive reading of George William ‘Daddy’ Green beyond the year 1900, I highly recommend the National Fairground and Circus Archive Research and Articles at the University of Sheffield.

1890
CHARLES PHILIP BESELER (1840-1908)
The Charles Beseler Company founded in 1869 manufactured a variety of instruments both in the optical field as well as in the medical. His products included Magic Lantern, slides, Dissolving Stereopticons and Stereopticons.

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The Charles Beseler Company is based in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania with its photo division specialising in silver halide photography and darkroom accessories.

1890
DONISTHORPE’S TRAFALGAR SQUARE FOOTAGE

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The falling combs of the wool comber were replaced with falling photographic plates in the Kinesigraph

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Here are some images of the replica Kinesigraph made, and now borrowed from Race to Cinema showing both external and internal mechanisms (two photographs of each). The real Kinesigraph of Donisthorpe and Crofts has been lost in time.

^{Image The Race to Cinema}

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The Donisthorpe-Crofts Kinesigraph in reconstructed form below. Only ten frames survive of the original footage and it’s these ten frames you see looped in my animation above.

^{Image The Race to Cinema}

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SEE the replica Kinesigraph commissioned by Race to Cinema in action.

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Donisthorpe set up the Kinesigraph in a vacant office at One Northumberland Avenue overlooking Trafalgar Square and recorded the passing traffic.

Below, the schematic for the Kinesigraph patented with William Carr Crofts in 1889. From Stephen Herbert.

^{Image Stephen Herbert, The Optilogue}

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Donisthorpe set up the Kinesigraph in a vacant office at One Northumberland Avenue overlooking Trafalgar Square and recorded the passing traffic

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Here, as Race to Cinema puts it, is a “Twinned with the 21st century film.” A brief glimpse from 1890 to today and how the traffic around Trafalgar Square looked then, and how it looks today. It’s quite amazing to see the two views side by side.

1890
CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY ON A STOOL
GEORGES EMILE JOSEPH DEMENŸ
According to Jacques Deslandes in his 1966 book Histoire comparée du cinéma, tome 1, De la cinématique au cinématographe 1826-1896, published in Paris by Casterman, on page 174, Demenÿ took these actualitiés of a lady spinning around on a stool.

_{Animation HOTDOC}

They comprised twenty-four in all taken at a rate of 12 per second. I have not obtained the 24 photographs or an animation but I did obtain 15 of the pictures from independent researcher and author Caroline Chik, and made my own animation of what Demenÿ wanted to see in 1890.

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Chik does not explain what his reference to “last portrait” could have meant, but I’m thinking it likely was his last series of actualitiés.

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🎞️ Baiser Envolé / Kiss Flies Away, which is shown here

🎞️ Clin D’Éventail / Fan Wink

🎞️ Cancan / which is French for dance in your underwear

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for the first time, you could experience a show without being in the theatre

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Tasha Kitcher, a PhD candidate at Loughborough University sheds some light for us on where and what exactly is this photograph about;

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The Electrophone was made possible by the efforts of Frenchman Ernest Mercadier, who was the first to patent headphones.

These were inspired by the French Théâtrophone however, unlike the Théâtrophone, the Electrophone did not employ stereo technology.

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Theatre circuit equipment (schematic below) sent the signal through telephone wires to a central receiver in the home where one or more headsets could be installed.

What listeners heard, would be from small microphones hidden behind the footlights at the front of the stage.

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inventors of the time understood that telephone wires could be used to deliver audio from one person to many and not just for one-to-one conversations

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In the red print is a post-it card for potential subscribers to apply for a connection and return it to the London Electrophone Company by mail.

In the blue print a ca. 1895 unsigned copy of a contract between the Electrophone company and the Reform Club of Pall Mall.

^{Images the Museum of London}

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Here is The Electrophone Transmitter explained from an article written for Early Radio History by electrical engineer J. Wright on 10 September, 1897, pp343-344.

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As Herbert states, he and historians around the world will;

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SEE a video animation of ten of the disks L01-L10 found by Eli Nesmith and published by The Optilogue shown here.

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THE BOX
The box that contained the glass disks is shown here. The hole on the side may have had something to do with the machine itself—perhaps the crank-handle hole if used while encased. The disks were found wrapped in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper from 1898.

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the usual suspects were rounded up in this mystery to suggest what this apparatus might be and who made it

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The plate’s function is unknown. In the UK 3/4 inches was the common lantern slide size in the 1890s. Here is a 3.25-inch plate on the left, a variant of the subject of large disc L04, highlighted on the right.

This image has been digitally inverted (converted from negative to positive).

^{Photos by Eli Nesmith}

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the guy who tried to animate on a screen, the beating heart of a frog by taking six consecutive photographs

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SEE another video animation of the disks L11-L19 seen in these frames found by Eli Nesmith and published by The Optilogue here.

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THE UNKNOWN CAMERA / VIEWER / PROJECTOR
As Stephen Herbert stated;

“We know nothing about the camera(s) on which these disks were taken, or the machine(s) with which they were intended to be viewed or projected. It might have been a hybrid camera/viewer-projector.”

Pictured here is the box, opened showing the discs the way it appeared when discovered in 2020.

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THE USUAL SUSPECTS
The usual suspects were rounded up in this mystery to suggest what this apparatus might be and who made it.

Nº 1 THE CINÉPHOTE
The Cinéphote was marketed as a portrait camera rather than a Motion Picture camera. Image on the right is from Getty images. Both Cinéphotes are from 1910.

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THE PLOT THICKENS
THOMPSON-GRAY
Another Thompson, named Dr. William G. Thompson teams up with the aforementioned Robert D. Gray and produces another disk camera they called . . . wait for it . . . the Thompson-Gray Camera.

This is the same William G. Thompson I presented in chapter sixteen. The guy who tried to animate on a screen, the beating heart of a frog by taking six consecutive photographs of it with a camera he built.

Unfortunately, the Thompson-Gray Disk Camera hides in the shadows.

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STIRN CONCEALED DISK CAMERA
Stirn’s Concealed Vest Camera was announced in 1886 and was available until 1892. It offered 5.5, 6 or 7 inch diametre glass disk models. I spoke about Stirn in the last chapter.

It was available for concealment under a jacket or in a private sliding door wooden case.

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this mystery is still on-going as of late 2025

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Finally, one further comment from Stephen Herbert’s The Optilogue web page/blog regarding other suspects in the mystery;

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The research and investigation continue. READ the complete story of the Eli Nesmith discovery at The Optilogue.

Early motion picture discovery: Photographic discs from the 1890s (Part 1)
Early motion picture discovery: Photographic discs from the 1890s (Part 2)
Early motion picture discovery: Photographic discs from the 1890s (Part 3)
Early motion picture discovery: Photographic discs from the 1890s (Part 4)

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UPDATED September 2025
THE NESMITH PHOTOGRAPHIC DISCS OF 2020
An Unsolved Mystery at the Dawn of Cinema
In 2020, a remarkable discovery was made by Eli Nesmith: a collection of late 19^th century photographic disks and plates relating to an early motion picture system.

This find is of profound significance as a tangible artifact from the period of intense technological experimentation that preceded the standardization of cinema. While the historical context of the disks is well-established, placing them firmly within the 1890s, the central mystery of their creator remains unsolved.

Despite plausible theories connecting the work to known inventors such as Robert Dempsey Gray or Georges Demenÿ, no definitive attribution has been made. The discovery offers a unique and invaluable window into a forgotten branch of early motion picture technology, highlighting the decentralized and pluralistic nature of invention in the pre cinema era.

It underscores the ongoing and active nature of historical research and demonstrates the value of new discoveries in challenging established narratives about the origins of modern media.

The Nesmith Discovery: A Box from the 1890s
The history of early motion pictures is a dynamic field, and new discoveries can reshape established understanding. In 2020, a box containing a collection of photographic discs and plates was found in the USA by Eli Nesmith, who had inherited the material from his aunt and uncle.

Mr. Nesmith, along with his brother Robbie, has made the details, images, and animations of the artifacts publicly available, allowing researchers to examine this enigmatic find. The discovery is a rare case of a previously unknown early motion picture system coming to light, providing a unique look into a period of inventive chaos.

The discovery included a variety of media, each with distinct physical characteristics. The primary artifacts were a series of 8-inch glass disks.

These disks are circular, with a central hole for a spindle and a smaller, off-centre hole designed to receive a location pin, presumably to ensure proper registration within a camera or viewing device.

The disks carry either 24 or 40 negative photographs arranged in a ring slightly in from the outer edge. The photographs are wedge-shaped, a notable design choice that eliminates the need for black areas between frames, as seen in other systems of the time.

In addition to the disks, the discovery also included at least one 3.25-inch glass plate, a standard size for lantern slides, and a single 8-inch square celluloid sheet with a positive image sequence. The contents of the box and the physical nature of the media provide a critical starting point for any analysis.

Perhaps the most crucial piece of evidence for dating the find was the fact that the disks were found wrapped in a copy of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle newspaper from 1898.

This detail provides a reliable terminus post quem—a point in time after which the items must have been placed in the box. This specific late 19^th century dating is of paramount importance because it immediately narrows the field of potential inventors.

It allows researchers to disregard later patents and commercial systems, such as the Cinéphote, which was introduced around 1909 and had patents dating from after 1903. This single fact guides the entire investigative process, shifting the focus squarely to the intense period of photographic innovation that characterized the 1890s.

The Historical Context: Chronophotography and the Age of Invention
To fully appreciate the significance of the Nesmith disks, they must be placed within the broader historical and technological landscape of the late 19^th century.

The period was dominated by Chronophotography, a scientific movement that sought to capture and analyze movement in a series of still photographs. The field was pioneered by figures like Eadweard Muybridge, who in the 1870s used an intricate system of multiple cameras triggered by electrical circuits to study the gait of a horse (The Man Who Stopped Time posted at Stanford University).

This approach was cumbersome and complex, leading to later innovations. Étienne-Jules Marey, for instance, developed a single-camera approach, including a Chronophotographic gun that took twelve successive photographs on a single rotating disk.

The movement toward sequential imaging on a single medium set the stage for the Nesmith discs.

The existence of the Nesmith disks, a previously undocumented and unpatented system, is a direct testament to the vibrant and decentralized nature of early invention.

It reveals that the history of cinema is not a simple, linear narrative dominated by a few famous names, such as Thomas Edison and the Lumière brothers, but rather a chaotic wild West of technological exploration.

The fact that the disks were found without their associated machine reinforces the idea that many of these pioneering systems were either prototypes, custom-built devices, or commercial failures that were never fully documented.

The Nesmith disks are just one of many different and often incompatible formats that were being explored during this era. A comparative analysis highlights the unique position of this discovery.

The Search for a Creator: Examining the Evidence and Theories
The co-existence of these many different and often mutually incompatible systems demonstrates a period of intense, chaotic, and unstandardized innovation.

The Nesmith discovery is not an anomaly; it is a perfectly fitting example of the norm for this specific historical moment. The central question raised by the Nesmith discovery is whether the creator of these unique disks and their associated machine can be identified.

Based on all available evidence, the creator remains definitively unknown. The article that originally publicized the find (The Optilogue Part 3) openly speculates that the inventor might be “completely unknown to historians.” Nevertheless, researchers have explored several plausible theories based on the period’s known innovators.

One theory links the discovery to a collaboration between Dr. William Gilman Thompson and Robert Dempsey Gray. The latter, R.D. Gray, was a prolific inventor in the field of photography who patented a moving picture camera in both the USA and Germany in 1895.

Gray had a track record of adapting technology, having created a slim disk-shaped camera that could be hidden beneath a jacket. This invention, which eliminated the ‘gun camera’ aesthetic, was a collaboration with Dr. William Gilman Thompson, a New York physician who specialized in internal medicine.

It is important to distinguish this Thompson from others, such as the military surgeon William Thomson, who was a pioneer in photomicrography. While the Thompson-Gray collaboration is a tantalizing possibility, the connection to the Nesmith disks remains unproven.

Another line of inquiry follows the work of Georges Demenÿ, an assistant to Étienne-Jules Marey, Demenÿ who himself became a pioneer in Chronophotography.

He invented the Phonoscope, a viewer and projector that used glass disks for projection, and his work was influential. Research notes that Walter Isaacs in New York used a Demenÿ-type design in the Bioscope film projector, which provides a potential geographical link to the US discovery.

However, Demenÿ’s invention, while technologically similar in its use of a disk, has not been directly connected to the specific technical features of the Nesmith find.

Ultimately, the lack of a definitive match among known inventors combined with the proliferation of unrecorded patents and prototypes from this era makes it highly probable that the creator of the Nesmith disks was an independent inventor whose work never achieved commercial success or documentation.

The discovery’s unique technical features, such as its specific pinhole location system and wedge-shaped images, suggest a bespoke, custom-built system, not a mass-produced one.

The presence of a custom-built box and a single celluloid sheet alongside the glass disks suggests a creator who was actively experimenting with different materials and designs, possibly a hobbyist or a professional who did not pursue a patent or public sale.

The combination of these factors makes the “lost inventor” hypothesis the most historically and logically consistent explanation.

The Challenge of Historical Attribution: A Methodological Case Study
The mystery of the Nesmith disks is not just an isolated puzzle; it serves as a powerful case study in the challenges of historical attribution. The difference between a solvable and an unsolvable historical mystery often comes down to the nature of the evidence itself.

Consider, for example, the successful attribution of an undated photograph by William Henry Jackson captioned Street in French Quarter, New Orleans. The mystery was solved by a meticulous process of historical investigation (Solving an 1890s Photographic Mystery by Richard Campanella in 2021 posted at The Preservation Resource Center of New Orleans).

The analyst used a cluster of contextual clues to pinpoint the location and date. Clues included the social aspects of the scene, such as street peddlers and poor children, and architectural details of a Creole townhouse. The analyst also used the sun angle to determine the street’s orientation and noted the absence of streetcar tracks.

The most critical clue was a house number, 67, which was only visible after digitally manipulating a super-high-resolution version of the photo.

By consulting old maps from 1883 and 1886, the analyst successfully matched the house number and structural layout to a specific location: the St. Philip Boys Public School.

Furthermore, the exact date of the photograph—November 1890—was determined by analyzing opera posters visible in other photographs from Jackson’s collection and cross-referencing them with searchable online newspaper databases.

This case illustrates how a wealth of rich, specific contextual data can lead to a definitive conclusion.

The Nesmith disks present a stark contrast. The core problem is the absence of this very context. While the Jackson photo was rich with contextual clues—specific buildings, street numbers, and temporary items like opera posters—the Nesmith disks are de-contextualized artifacts.

There are no names, no identifiable locations within the images themselves (the “shoe shuffle” or “boys fighting” are generic scenes), and no dates other than the newspaper wrapping. The lack of this critical ancillary data is the reason the mystery remains unsolved, despite the best efforts of researchers.

It is not a matter of a lack of effort but rather a lack of the necessary evidence. The discovery’s unique technical features suggest a custom-built, bespoke system, which further removes it from the realm of mass-produced, well-documented inventions.

The fundamental difficulty lies in the nature of the evidence itself, which is isolated from the very contextual anchors that can solve similar historical puzzles.

Conclusion: The Significance of an Unsolved Mystery
In summary, the creator of the photographic disks discovered by Eli Nesmith remains unidentified. While the most plausible theories link the work to known innovators like Robert Dempsey Gray and Georges Demenÿ, the specific technical features of the disks and the lack of a conclusive match make it highly likely that the creator was an independent, undocumented inventor.

The discovery is significant not because it has solved a mystery, but because it has opened a new one.

The importance of the Nesmith find lies in what it reveals about the broader history of technology. It stands as a tangible reminder of the many unrecorded, forgotten, and commercially unsuccessful efforts that paved the way for modern cinema.

The history of early motion pictures is a story of simultaneous, parallel inventions, with multiple formats—from film strips to disks and beyond—competing for dominance.

The Nesmith disks are a physical manifestation of this technological pluralism, demonstrating that the celebrated inventions of Thomas Armat and Ottomar Anschütz were but one path forward among many. The ongoing effort to identify the creator and the associated machine will continue, ensuring that the Nesmith discovery remains an enduring puzzle for historians and researchers for years to come.

Pictured is the Lyceum today. The Lenox Lyceum is a notable music hall and event venue located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, near Madison Avenue. In the 1890s it was a significant and “eloquent concert hall” and event venue, particularly notable for its impressive acoustics and capacity to host a variety of gatherings.

It was highly praised for being “one of the most perfect auditoriums for the purpose that has ever been built. Its acoustic perfection is said to be marvelous.”

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Chronicler Gordon Hendricks in his comprehensive work The Edison Motion Picture Myth has presented some impressive details, but as he himself points out, “Since an exhaustive search has discovered no other reference to this projection . . . we can assume that such a projection occurred.” (p92).

The presentation is said to be the sponsored work of Edison, at the Lenox Lyceum, which was at one time the Panoramic Building on Madison Avenue, New York City.

Thomas Edison’s Talking Dolls were introduced to the public at the Lenox Lyceum on 7 April 1890 (interestingly), to great fanfare. An electrical exhibition at the Lyceum also in April 1890 featured the Théâtrophone, allowing visitors to hear live performances from other theatres and even a spoken news letter transmitted over telephone wires.

Both of which I have reported on.

And then there is the Tachyscope projection. There are reports of a public motion picture projection of a Tachyscope, possibly sponsored by Edison and using Muybridge’s photographs, at the Lenox Lyceum though it seems only reporters witnessed the screening.

However, there is something to be reminded of. Remember monkeyshines?

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photographs made and shown in the Edison lab to this time, where well known as being microscopic and not suitable for full projection in any projector he had

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“The effects produced are indeed wonderful, and in splendor outrank anything ever seen in this country. A magic lantern of almost unimaginable power casts upon the ceiling from the top of the tower such pictures as seen to be the actual performances of living persons.“

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Interestingly, The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle, published through the University of Pennsylvania where Muybridge had worked earlier, reported regarding the photographs of Muybridge, that Thomas Edison had used, “Muybridge’s motion photographs of running horses . . . [as] his first continuous movie on a strip film.”

Even though Muybridge’s “running horses” were never on a strip of film, and that the Schnellseher used a disk, we know what the reporter was inferring.

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Gordon Hendricks “argues strongly” that Edison either bought or built an Anschütz Schnellseher Tachyscope for an exhibition of Edison’s work at the Lenox Lyceum

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OK. So could Anschütz have attended the Lyceum event on the 7th and then sailed in time to be in Austria for the 21st? This would also have required some land travel. Rossell makes no mention of 7 April or the Lenox Lyceum.

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Pictured here are three images of the drum version of Ottomar Anschütz’s Tachyscope 1890, and one image of the advanced version of the Schnellseher known as the Electrical Tachyscope because of the spark.

The Electrical Tachyscope showed five sets of moving images simultaneously. Transparencies were continuously moving, each illuminated by the brief spark.

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1890
THE MUTOSCOPE
HERMANN CASLER (1867-1939)
Casler’s Mutoscope perhaps typifies the peepshow in its purest form. A simple motion picture viewing machine capable of flipping pictures chronologically were passed before the viewing area as a crank is turned.

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Hermann Casler’s Mutoscope was one of the first successful nickelodeon machines to commercially exploit pictures in motion

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Hermann Casler’s Mutoscope was one of the first successful nickelodeons to commercially exploit motion pictures. This original coin-operated peep show machine housed a roll of photographs, which were turned by the handle after a nickel was deposited in the slot.

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“it is hardly possible to exaggerate the corruption of the young that comes from exhibiting under a strong light, nude female figures represented as living and moving, going into and out of baths”

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In 1898, the San Francisco Call published a short item about the Mutoscope, saying that it was tremendously amusing;

“Twenty machines, all different and amusing views…are crowded day and night with sightseers.”

^{– published 6 November 1898 in their article entitled The Mutoscope, The San Francisco Call}

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Like all media we have discovered and/or invented over time, sin will enter in. Radio, TV, magazines or film, it makes no difference. One such example is the Smutoscope or Mutoscope.

After some smutty pictures started to make their appearance in the Mutoscope, the same newspaper the San Francisco Call published the following just five months later;

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photographs were mounted radially on an axle and when rotated or turned, each photograph was held in sequence just long enough to be seen before being replaced by the next

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the principle of Apparent Motion is most simplified and understood, with Flip Book animation, which the Mutoscope demonstrated accurately

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1890s
PROJECTED SHADOWS
HENRI MAIGROT (1857-1933)
Going by the name HENRIOT, Maigrot published a 44-page album entitled Les Poilus à Travers les Ages, a highly illustrated book, with commentaries and captions of the military adventures of France.

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This subject is part of the Lyrical Pieces of Projected Shadows which were very fashionable from the mid 1890s until the early 1920s. Unfortunately, there is no picturesque repertoire of these “Shadows of Art” having been performed at the time, outside of this book.

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the Panoramic paintings represented in this album are intended to be projected in the form of views on glass, scrolling via a projection lantern

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A total of one hundred and five paintings, beautifully illustrated in black silhouettes on a monochrome background, represent battles, parades or rural moments from Lyrical Pieces of Projected Shadows which were very fashionable from the mid 1890s until the early 1920s.

Some have thought the American University manufactured a motion picture device, but not so. It’s a trade name only, that would have been seen in local theatre bills, plaques and lantern literature of the period.

It was not an institutional apparatus from Cambridge, MA. Below is a plaque commemorating Harvard’s Cinematoscope at the Pavilion Theatre Leicester, which was called the Tivoli Theatre back then.

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Several early cinema survey pages and local history write-ups identify Fred Harvard as a commercial exhibitor/merchant who marketed devices under names like Animatoscope / Cinematoscope etc. between 1896 and 1902.

He used the trade name for projection shows across UK towns such as Hackney, Leicester, Bristol and many others.

However, the Optical Magic Lantern Journal, of November 1897 shows a trade advertisement on page xvi listing Harvard’s Improved Cinematoscope and Metallic Bellows Regulator as a product.

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All the evidence points to exhibitor/trade use, not an academic apparatus.

1890
BRASS CAMERA LUCIDA
A fascinating drawing mechanism, the Camera Lucida is a cousin to the Camera Obscura. Made entirely of brass. This one pictured, has a set of lenses. On the table clamp is the manufacturer’s engraved name, P. Berville. I have never been able to learn the name of the first initial.

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for decades, the Camera Lucida functioned as a bridge between freehand sketching and photography

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In 1611, astronomer Johannes Kepler described the basic notion of the Camera Lucida. In 1806, William Hyde Wollaston invented an instrument with a four-sided prism, almost two hundred years later.

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For decades, the Camera Lucida functioned as a bridge between freehand sketching and photography, and it was extremely popular in this capacity. Writer, painter, historian David Hockney using his Lucida.

1891
THE VIVRESCOPE
I have been looking for this projector for awhile now and have come up dry, except for the following. The Vivrescope appears in some newspaper clippings I have found related to theatrical stage performances.

For instance, an 1892 newspaper mentions the Vivrescope projecting amusing scenes during a play onto a canvas, suggesting it was a device similar to early projectors like the Vitascope. However, I have also found this machine listed routinely in newspaper clippings as early as 1891 to 1893.

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From these clippings it appears the Vivrescope travelled with a theatrical troupe called the Eunice Goodrich Company, that travelled the US States in the mid to late 1890s.

As well, it may be associated with a Mr. Lew Welsh who was part of the troupe and always happens to be mentioned when it makes it’s appearance within the play, casting moving images onto a canvass.

These sources list no owner or maker.

1891
KINEMATOGRAPH
ARTHUR SAMUEL NEWMAN (1862–1943)
JULIO GUARDIA (1860-1906)
Arthur S. Newman was an English photographic engineer and inventor who co-founded Newman & Guardia in the 1890s after earlier camera work at other firms, who patented shutter and cine mechanisms, and later set up Newman & Sinclair.

He was a respected figure in British photographic and early cinematographic circles.

Around 1896 Newman & Guardia designed and patented a motion picture apparatus they called the Kinematograph which was at times referred to as the Photokinematograph. The device was marketed commercially and sold for about £30 or $146 US back then. Today that would be $5,400.

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Newman & Guardia were not the Lumières, but they were an important British maker who quickly adapted camera know-how to moving pictures

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Film was driven by two sprocket claws, with eccentric cam movement, a single-blade shutter, a pulley drive and a speed regulator.

The original Newman & Guardia patents for their Kinematographic apparatuses were granted in 1896 (№ 22707) and 1897 (№ 27542) with the movement described being utilised in the Kinematographic camera.

Three slightly different versions of the camera seem to have been produced according to advertising in the British Journal Photographic Almanac.

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Inside the Newman & Guardia workshop: two images of where the Kinematographic camera and many other cameras were made.

_{Images EarlyPhotography}

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Newman & Guardia were not the Lumières, but they were an important British maker who quickly adapted camera know-how to moving pictures: they built a commercially available Kinematograph, sold to scientific and high-end users, supplied film services, and contributed patents and designs to the early British cine trade.

Currently, one other example of the Newman & Guardia Kinematograph is known to exist in the collection of the National Science and Media Museum.

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by viewing each image through the appropriate colour filter, then merging them, a photograph is obtained with its original colours

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Clément and Gilmer tells its dealers that;

“advertising is the only way to sell special items like this that fetch a certain price. The price of the ‘Kromskope,’ with ‘frosted screen’ and 4 ‘Kromograms’ all for 200 francs.”

Three pages of the marketing manual below.

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The marketing manual published by Clément and Gilmer gives a number of details about the Kromskope. This particular excerpt below highlights a comparison between the Phonograph and the Cinematograph;

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The resulting image . . . .

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The “complete specification” schematic for the Ives Photochromoscope patent № 2305 applied for 1 February 1895 and granted 11 January 1896.

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Another example of Ives’s Kromogram colour process.

📷 Right- The Kromogram BW contact sheet produced by Ives

📷 Left- The final product

Both images ron labbe @studio3d on X. Totally amazing.

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This excerpt from the Clément and Gilmer marketing manual indicates that this optical device;

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Here, from the US patent office is Ives patent № 531040 for his Photochromoscope Camera dated 18 December 1894.

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The frames used in this camera called Kromograms, could be purchased ready to view, as the directory shown here indicates, or can be taken by “amateur photographers” to whom “we can offer shortly, at a very low price.”

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This entry in the Clément and Gilmer marketing manual for Frederic Ives Kromskope specifies how it should be used;

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“the price of the Kromskope with frosted screen and 4 Kromograms all for 200 francs”

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These are four of Frederick Ives photographs or Kromograms, of the April 1906 aftermath of the San Francisco earthquake using his own colour method.

These are graciously provided by Stuart Humphryes at BabelColour. These are the original Kromograms. They have only been cleaned and not colourised.

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This patent lists the use of polarised light and a projection screen that had a metallic surface. The apparatus was marketed by Field and Company of Birmingham where Anderton worked. He used sets of glass plates as polarizers and analyzers for the viewing.

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“the various performances that were given aroused great interest and applause”

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Vivian K. Walworth, in her work History of Polarized Image Stereoscopic Display states “it’s unknown if he was ever successful in showing off such a system.”

However, F. P. Liesegang (Dates and Sources, page 109) says Anderton “performed stereoscopic projection.”

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“the various performances that were given aroused great interest and applause” according to Liesegang who cites a presentation given at the Royal Society in London, June 1893 as one example of Anderton’s success at projecting stereo pictures.

Field and Company’s price list contained numerous other “successful projection” reviews.

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FAST FORWARD TO 1936
At the Conference of the German Society for Photographic Research of 1936 in Berlin, a paper was read by a Dr. Haase (who made mention of Anderton), on new polarising filters and their applications. This report is found in The Wireless World, 28 August 1936.

^{Images Michael Saunby}

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Stereoscopic Projection by Polarlised Light is the title of The Wireless World article on the German Society for Photographic Research conference having taken place at the Manfred von Ardenne Laboratory in Berlin in 1936.

As the article states, reported by Michael Saunby;

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Anderton detailed using Magic Lanterns furnished with Nicol prisms, and Tourmaline Crystals to project matched images. Here in his own words from his patent № 542321 is his description of how the two lanterns operated;

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Light may be polarized in four different ways;

🎞️ by reflection
🎞️ single refraction
🎞️ double refraction
🎞️ and through Tourmaline Crystals

Here from The Optical Magic Lantern Journal, September 1892, pp100, 101 we read a contemporary report on Anderton’s projector.

1891
VICTOR VON REITZNER (1844-1916
Victor von Reitzner may also have been known as Viktor Károly István Antal Reitzner and was recognized for his contributions to the early development of moving images.

He produced a combination camera and projector, for which he received German patent Nº 59390 on 22 March 1891, for “Aufnahme- und Projektionsapparat für bewegliche Objekte” or, “Recording and projection apparatus for moving objects.”

Little else is known of this Austrian excepting that which historians Cornelia Kemp has revealled in Foto und Film Die Technik der Bilder (2017) and Deac Rossell has reported in Chronology of the Birth of Cinema 1833-1896, (2022).

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Kemp hasn’t turned Reitzner into a household name in film history perhaps because his 1891 device never reached wide visibility or adoption. But Kemp’s research is generally considered the most fleshed‑out, scholarly account we have, going beyond basic patent details to add historical context within broader German photographic and projection practices.

According Kemp the device featured a continuous-moving upper band of celluloid film, an intermittent metal shutter running in the opposite direction with a hand-crank driving both film transport and shutter mechanism in sync.

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Even though it was technically groundbreaking and speculative in approach at the time, Reitzner’s device remained obscure at the time and today. It never gained the same commercial or historical prominence as other contemporaries of the 1890s.

1891
LADIES FIRST
Did you know that women were the first to see Edison’s Kinetoscope in 1891?

A particular event in early motion picture history – the day when a group of approximately 150 women were the first to see Edison’s latest invention, the Kinetoscope – 20 May, 1891.

_{Left image from Rossell (1833-1866) p125}

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“the gestures of a speaker are accurately reproduced, while the spoken or sung words are reproduced by the phonograph”

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Edison’s public premiere of the Kinetoscope took place at the Orange laboratory to a gathering of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs (established the year before in 1890 and now called The General Federation of Women’s Clubs), an event hosted by Edison’s wife, Mina on May 20 1891.

An article in the New York Sun described what the club of women saw in the “small pine box” they encountered that May day;

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As the Orange Chronicle stated in their coverage of the event;  

“. . . after the close of the entertainment a large number of the ladies were, by special invitation, driven down to the laboratory, where Mr. Edison himself was present and exhibited to them the Kinetoscope, the new invention that he is about perfecting, by which the gestures of a speaker are accurately reproduced, while the spoken or sung words are reproduced by the phonograph.”

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^{Kinetoscope images Science Museum}

Most of these optical devices never made it past inspection and disappeared onto the scrap heap of history.

Some of these apparatuses had limited success and have been forgotten by historians. However, the little success they had, was a great contribution.

When you see the suffix graph it usually means photographing or recording. The suffix scope typically refers to a device for projection as in the Greek word scopos, for seeing. Tropes are mostly talking about some kind of imagery.

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North American colours are typically blue and red, whereas in Europe red and green were established early on. The viewer wears the same-coloured glasses to see the effect — red in the left eye and green or blue in the right lens.

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“a motion picture where the characters don’t appear to be on a flat screen, but moving about which has depth.”

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Anaglyph is taken from the Greek language and two words are used to create it — sculpture and again — in this case to re-sculpture a photograph or picture.

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Popular Mechanics reported the “invited audience consisted of 200 scientists, photographers, motion-picture experts, and news-paper men.”

The writer said “a motion picture where the characters don’t appear to be on a flat screen, but moving about which has depth.”

Pictured in the centre is Harry Kenneth Fairall who directed The Power of Love and co-developed the Stereoscopic 3D camera and the projection system. The camera is on the right.

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The Power of Love (1922) wasn’t a success in 3D. It only had the 2 showings, prior to a reworked 2D version (the rights now owned by Selznick) was released in 1923 called Forbidden Lover (also presumed lost).

Below, your instructions for watching a 3D film in 1923;

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Here’s a cute eight-minute film explaining 3D movies from a very 1935 perspective. Your host is the funny man Pete Smith. Produced by MGM for its viewing patrons called Audioscopiks.

1891-1892
CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHY
ALBERT LONDE (1858-1917)
Adding three more lenses to his camera of 1882, Albert Londe now uses twelve lenses to photograph a succession of images of patients in a variety of movements.

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The purpose of Londe’s Chronophotography was the study of muscle-movement. His work was completed at Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris just like Marey in 1882. Exposures lasted from 1.5 seconds to several seconds.

Here, a female patient and the falling horse equine patient.

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like Muybridge and Marey, Londe took Chronophotographs of the human form in motion to study

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Two more examples of Chronophotographic disks taken by Albert Londe; on the left a woman sitting looking at the camera and on the right a portrait of Mlle Charcot Marey’s cabin, parc des princes, 1883.

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Albert Londe, “attack of hysteria in man snapshot sheet” contact print from 1885. Like Muybridge and Marey, Londe took Chronophotographs of the human form in motion to study. In Londe’s case, muscle movement – for instance kicking a soccer ball.

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Albert Londe published six journals in all and worked with Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot who was considered the leading French neurologist of the century. The twelve-lens camera was illustrated in the journal La Nature, 1893.

Also, a reprinted photograph of the twelve-lens camera.

1892
STÉRÉOSCOPE CHRONOPHOTOGRAPHIQUE
ÉMILE THIEBAUT
Thiébaut’s Stéréoscope Chronophotographique is an obscure but conceptually bold attempt to marry Stereoscopy with motion, a rare hybrid that tried to simulate three-dimensional movement just as cinema was arriving on the world stage.

Thiébaut entered into French optical and photographic circles in the late 19th century. Very little is documented about him directly but I’m thinking he may have been more of a mechanic/instrument maker than a theorist. He is associated loosely with the traditions of Marey and Chronophotography.

The Stéréoscope Chronophotographique was designed to present a sequence of stereo images in rapid succession and simulate movement in depth, basically 3D animation, well before that term existed. This device is an exact hinge point between Stereoscopy and cinema, trying to merge spatial realism with temporal flow, if that makes sense.

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The Thiébaut Stéréoscope Chronophotographique operated mechanically by crank but it does appear to possibly have been connected to a motor, advancing paired Stereoscopic photos frame by frame in sync. It anticipated the stereo-motion work of later figures like Friese-Greene and L. Dufay in the 20th century.

Because no surviving models are confirmed in collections, museums or institutions, here’s a plausible reconstruction based on patent translations and optical logic from my friends in AI;

📽️ a vertically sliding plate
📽️ a viewing chamber with fixed lenses for left/right eye
📽️ a shuttering or flicker mechanism to block blur between frames
📽️ hand-cranked, like a Mutoscope

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The Thiébaut Stéréoscope Chronophotographique fits in the same conceptual zone as Marey’s chronophotographic plates, Reynaud’s Praxinoscope Théâtre and the Stereoscopic Daedaleum/Zoetrope experiments of the 1860s.

But Thiébaut took it further, trying to achieve moving images in stereo, which was decades ahead of its time. But the device was forgotten early on, mostly because the tech was difficult: stereo photography already required precision and stereo motion multiplied complexity.

We’ve seen how other well known pioneers of Stereoscopy had struggled in their attempts at stereo motion. And, there was no commercial path because cinema’s rise quickly eclipsed devices like this.

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No surviving apparatus as far as is known by me, seems to exist, just some limited documentation. References appear mainly in obscure French patent indexes and trade journals like La Nature or La Revue générale des sciences (1892–93).

The significance of the Émile Thiébaut Stéréoscope Chronophotographique is that it was meant to display stereo-image sequences to simulate 3D motion. It is a lost precursor of 3D cinema; fusing Chronophotography, stereoscopy, and animation.

1892
NEW MECHANICAL CINEMA
THOMAS EDWIN BICKLE (1857-1898)
Born into a family of engineers, Thomas succeeded his father Jebus and turned Massey and Bickle into Bickle and Company, 2 November 1889 in Plymouth. Being mechanically inclined Thomas worked primarily in pumping and mining, having devised the percussive rock-drill known as the Bickle Rock Drill.

Along the way he was granted a British Patent № 20281 for a Clockwork Thaumatrope with “pictures or designs exhibiting some action or motion in two phases, which are thus alternately presented to the eye in rapid succession with small intervals of rest.”

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The closest I have been able to come to the Bickle Clockwork Thaumatrope are these two images from the Jack and Beverly Wilgus’ Bright Bytes Collection. On the left is an illustration from a booklet called Every Boy His Own Toy-Maker published by F. M. Lupton in 1874.

In the centre is a photograph of a Clockwork Toy Thaumatrope identified as the New Mechanical Cinema.

I have no other information but I believe it is turned mechanically and not by hand. The cards for this toy depict two frames of movement. The seesaw moves up and down, and as it does, a pair of boxers punch.

_{Boxers image Pook and Pook}

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From Thomas Bickle’s British Patent № 20281 for his Clockwork Thaumatrope New Mechanical Cinema of which I am not able to locate, is the key description for this device which may or may not have been built. Bickle died of a case of acute pneumonia in 1898.

From an article Richard Leskosky wrote for the Animation Journal in 1993.

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“The expression of offended dignity shown by the cat at the end of the first series indicates a want of interest in scientific investigation”

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Marey will send these images to the Scientific American Supplement for it’s 15 December 1894 issue here.

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A synopsis of his findings appeared in the journal Nature also in 1894, with a summary of his theory as;

“Monsieur Marey thinks that it is the inertia of its own mass that the cat uses to right itself. The torsion couple which produces the action of the muscles of the vertebra acts at first on the forelegs, which have a very small motion of inertia on account of the front feet being foreshortened and pressed against the neck. The hind legs, however, being stretched out and almost perpendicular to the axis of the body, possesses a moment of inertia which opposes motion in the opposite direction to that which the torsion couple tends to produce. In the second phase of the action, the attitude of the feet is reversed, and it is the inertia of the forepart that furnishes a fulcrum for the rotation of the rear.”

As if to defend the self-value of the feline regarding the perceived expression on the animal’s face after landing, the writer concluded the article by stating; “The expression of offended dignity shown by the cat at the end of the first series indicates a want of interest in scientific investigation.”

During 1892-1894 there was a phrase to describe the dropping of a cat for amusement sake, which was known as “cat-turning.”

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is this where the phrase “raining cats and dogs” came from?

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Marta Braun’s Picturing Time, on p173 states a month earlier than 2 May 1892, Marey “was projecting the images, but he was doing so by cutting them apart and attaching them individually …to a rubberized fabric strong enough to withstand the push and pull of the apparatus.”

Here in Marta Braun’s Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey, on p173 we see the entry identifying Marey “projecting the images” he had taken, in early April 1892 (and the matching figure 104).

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this dog has been jumping for about 132 straight years

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George Gilbert in his Collecting Photographica, on p237 claims Marey used a celluloid band, but places the event five years earlier, in 1887.

Here is the excerpt from Gilbert’s Collecting Photographica, – The Images and Equipment of The First Hundred Years of Photography, on p237.

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Marey photographed a dressage equestrian walking a lame horse and studied it’s gait again using a clock.

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Chronophotography was used by Marey to study the muscle movement of men and animals as had Anschutz, Muybridge, and others.

He studied birds in flight as well as how they landed. In this example, he showed how a pigeon lands. In another series, I will show how Marey studied insects in flight using Chronophotography.

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The Phonoscope was shown this year at the Exposition Internationale de Photographie de Paris and Demenÿ considered producing the machine for commercial use. The discs were 16.5 inches in diametre with his chronophotographs placed around the circumference, typically eighteen of them.

When Demenÿ began his company for manufacturing the Phonoscope (Société de Phonoscope), Marey withdrew completely from his relationship with Demenÿ and fired him from Station Physiologique.

Below, an etched-rendering of Demenÿ of twelve of the Chronophotographs as they would have appeared on a disk, when projected.

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Georges Demenÿ changed the name of the Phonoscope to the Bioscope in 1895, and began a business partnership with Leon Gaumont

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_{Animation HOTDOC}

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Here from Henry Hopwoods Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-Production and Practical Working (Henry Vaux Hopwood, Optician and Photographic Trades Review, London, 1899), on pp61 and 62 we read about the Phonoscope and Photophone.

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Pictured here: Georges Demenÿ himself: the proof sheet of the photographs: the Phonoscope showing the door open and finally, the exposed disk.

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when Demenÿ began his company for manufacturing the Phonoscope Marey withdrew completely from his relationship with Demenÿ and fired him

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BELOW
First, from 18 June 1892, posted in the Scientific American Supplement, is a wood engraving showing Demenÿ’s Chronophotography proof sheet of himself.

Next, the Demenÿ Phonoscope disc viewer of 1892. The images were supplied by his Chronophotographic celluloid strip camera 1892-1895.

Finally, projection capability with glass disc and lamphouse. From Stephen Herbert, The Optilogue. Illustration of Demenÿ’s Phonoscope taken from Principles of Cinematography- A Handbook of Motion Picture Technology, by Leslie J. Wheeler, Fountain Press, 1953 p24.

Demenÿ was also saying “Je vous aime.”

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Gaumont manufactured the Bioscope and had Alfred Molteni make his projecting lanterns. The Bioscope had no future and was not produced beyond 1896 however Gaumont did successfully exploit the beater mechanism concept after Demenÿ’s retirement in the early 20th century.

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1895
Pictured: A magnificently preserved Georges Demenÿ 60 mm Chronophotograph camera from 1895 showing four different angles.

_{Images The Malkames Collection}

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1897
Pictured: The Demenÿ-Gaumont 60mm Chronophotograph camera from two years later in 1897, along with the name plate indicating Leon Gaumont and Cie. as the manufacturer.

_{Image The Malkames Collection}

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1899
Pictured: from 1899 the Demenÿ 35mm Motion Picture camera showing two angles, with illustration and schematic, from The Malkames Collection.

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1899
Pictured: The 1899 version of Demenÿ’s 35mm Motion Picture camera from four angles showing the inner workings. Georges was a significant player in pre cinema history who garners far less attention than he deserves.

_{Image The Malkames Collection}

1892
THE THÉÂTRE OPTIQUE Presentation of PAUVRE PIERROT
CHARLES-EMILE REYNAUD (1844 – 1918)
This animation is called Pauvre Pierrot and was created and shown in 1892 by Reynaud using his Théâtre Optique at the Musée Grévin in Paris.

Pauvre Pierrot originally had 500+ painted images. Runs 4 minutes and two seconds. This is what the audience would have see. The Théâtre Optique operated from behind the viewing screen, like rear projection.

Reynaud was a French inventor, artist, and pioneer of early animation and cinema. Born in Montreuil, France, to an engineer father and a water colourist mother, he was home schooled, learning drawing, painting, and mechanics from his parents.

His contributions to animation and film technology are significant, particularly through his invention of the Praxinoscope and Théâtre Optique. In Paris, Reynaud opens his Théâtre Optique at Musée Grevin.

These animated performances lasted up to fifteen minutes at times, and involved between 500 to 700 individually painted frames.

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the Théâtre Optique operated from behind the viewing screen, like rear projection

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His Pantomimes Lumineuses (Luminous Pantomimes), including films like Pauvre Pierrot and Un Bon Bock, premiered on 28 October 1892 at the Musée Grévin in Paris.

These were some of the earliest public projections of animated films, accompanied by original music and sound effects. The Théâtre Optique was an extension of his original Praxinoscope but is much larger and intended for public projection to a large audience.

This performance will take place in 1892. Below, the Theatre Optique being operated. Think IMAX.

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Reynaud’s early career included work as a photographer and assistant to Abbé Moigno, where he gained experience with Magic Lantern projections. After his father’s death in 1865, he moved to Le Puy-en-Velay, where he studied sciences and gave public lectures using projections.

Returning to Paris in 1877, he commercialized the Praxinoscope and married a lady named Marguerite Rémiatte in 1879, with whom he had two sons, Paul and André.

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This engraving (pictured in the Hopkins book) is by the famed French engraver Louis Poyet to accompany an article written by Gaston Tissandier for the publication La Nature (Nº 999) in July 1892.

It was titled “Le Théâtre Optique de M. Reynaud.”

Despite his innovations, Reynaud’s work was eclipsed by the rise of photographic film and the multitude of pre cinema pioneers the world over.

By 1900, his Théâtre Optique screenings at the Musée Grévin, which attracted over 500,000 viewers, lost popularity, and the theatre closed. In a fit of despair, Reynaud destroyed his Théâtre Optique and threw most of his films into the Seine, though his son Paul preserved Pauvre Pierrot and Autour d’une cabine.

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HIGHLIGHTED Engraving by Louis Poyet illustrating the article Le Théâtre Optique de M. Reynaud by Gaston Tissandier showing Émile Reynaud projecting his animation Pauvre Pierrot (Poor Clown) published in La Nature issue No. 999 in 1892.

The Poyet engraving shows Émile Reynaud projecting his animation called Pauvre Pierrot to an audience in his Théâtre Optique at Musée Grevin in 1892.

This Optical Theatre is illustrated with a legend explaining the horizontally-driven film strip as;

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these animated performances lasted up to fifteen minutes at times, and involved between 500 to 700 individually painted frames

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^{Image Stephen Herbert}

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Two years later in 1894 we see Reynaud’s ‘Autour d’une cabine’ with some cooing, wooing, and swooning going on at the beach.

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The date of his first screening, 28 October, is celebrated as International Animation Day. Reynaud’s blend of art and technology laid foundational principles for animation and cinema, making him a pivotal figure in their early history.

1892
THE CHROMORAMA
This pioneering pre cinema contraption permitted the view of paintings, chromolithographs, photographs, engravings, drawings, etc. melting into each other like Dissolving Views. The name Louis Philip Rignoux I have seen associated with the Chromorama, but nothing that hints at invention.

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Obtaining information on the Chromorama has been difficult to say the least.I have no inventor or manufacturer, but there is a snippet of information on how the device works at Patrice Guerin’s History of Light Projections.

It’s possible the Chromorama was a niche device by a lesser-known French inventor, documented only in Guérin’s collection. The 1890s saw many experimental optical devices, and this colour-focused viewer could have been one of them.

^{Image Patrice Guerin}

Stollwerck was a pioneer in innovation, introducing the first chocolate vending machines in 1887, which grew to 15,000 by 1893, and organizing Germany’s first film screenings in 1896.

Birt Acres created the Elektroskop for Stollwerck seen here with his children, which was a small-screen viewer that allowed multiple patrons to watch a film at the same time.

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CHOCOLATE, OR A MOVIE

^{Kinetoscope image Science Museum Group}

Stollwerck focused on product quality, efficiency, and marketing, implementing strategies like chemical laboratories for quality control and a customs refund system for exports. In German-speaking countries, Stollwerck had exclusive rights to the Edison Kinetoscope (Image Science Museum Group) seen here alongside the Stollwerck one cent chocolate vending machine.

Additionally, he founded the Deutsche Automatengesellschaft to manage vending machine operations, diversifying into products like cigarettes and soap, and was involved in early cinema and telegraphy ventures.

He was a member of the Phonoscope Society (Société Francaise du Phonoscope) of which Georges Demenÿ was an affiliate, formed 20 December 1892.

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“Never in my life have l seen an invention that made so much money without risk and with almost no work. The people drag the money into the house!”

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Serikon celluloid had no joints or seams and was produced on tempered film, using an emulsion of Acre’s own formula. – The Acres Estate / Alan Acres.

Stollwerck’s enthusiasm led him to sign a contract with Georges Demenÿ who was working on his Phonoscope as early as 1892.

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As early as April 1896 Stollwerck wrote to a business partner in New York named John Volkmann about his amazement with Motion Pictures;

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Photographic emulsions in the 1890s consisted of light-sensitive silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin, determining the film’s sensitivity, contrast, and resolution

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SERIKON CELLULOID
Early motion picture films often had splices or joints, especially when longer lengths were needed, as short strips were manually joined. A seamless celluloid strip was a technical goal to ensure smooth camera and projector operation.

The sources confirm that by 1897, Birt Acres was producing films up to 600 feet long, coated on a continuous strip that passed through a coating machine and dried on a drum. This process aligns with the ‘no joints or seams’ claim, as Acres’ system allowed for “films of unlimited length.”

The European Blair Camera Company of whom I have spoken of, which supplied Acres with film stock, was cutting continuous strips as early as 1894, with Acres claiming they cut “the very first strip of film” to his order.

This suggests Acres had access to seamless celluloid, likely from Blair or his own manufacturing. The no joints or seams feature could describe Acres’ custom film stock, which was designed for his Kinetic Camera and projector, emphasizing continuity for reliable cinematography.

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TEMPERED SERIKON
The term “tempered film” refers to a celluloid base that was specially treated to improve its mechanical properties, such as flexibility, tensile strength, or resistance to tearing.

Celluloid production involved mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, rolled into sheets, and pressed into blocks, which were then sliced into thin strips. To make celluloid suitable for motion pictures, it needed to be flexible yet durable, as early celluloid was often too stiff.

Tempering could involve heat treatment (e.g., Carbutt’s use of heated pressure plates to remove slice marks) or chemical stabilization to reduce brittleness. Acres’ process, described in 1897, involved coating celluloid on a machine with rollers and drying it on a drum, which might have included steps to “temper” the film for better handling.

Tempered film refers to Acres’ celluloid base, processed to be uniformly thin, flexible, and free from defects, as Carbutt achieved by 1888. This aligns with Acres’ focus on high-quality film stock for his cinematographic work.

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ACRES’ EMULSION FORMULA
Acres began manufacturing his own film stock by 1896 through his Northern Photographic Company, coating celluloid with his own gelatin emulsion due to defects in commercially supplied films. He initially purchased pre coated films from suppliers like the European Blair Camera Company but found them unreliable, prompting him to develop his own emulsion.

Photographic emulsions in the 1890s consisted of light-sensitive silver halide crystals suspended in gelatin, determining the film’s sensitivity, contrast, and resolution. Acres’ custom formula would have been tailored to his Kinetic Camera’s needs, possibly optimizing for outdoor shooting (e.g., The Derby was filmed in daylight) or projection clarity.

I can’t be sure, but the formula’s composition was likely a silver bromide-based gelatin emulsion, standard for the era.

1892
ORIGINS OF THE SERPENTINE DANCE
MARIE LOUISE FULLER (1862-1928)
Fuller was an American dancer and theatrical innovator who became a pioneer of modern dance and theatrical lighting right on the cusp of full-blown cinema. Born in Fullersburg, Illinois, she began her career as a child actress before transitioning to dance in her late teens.

Fuller gained fame in the 1890s for her revolutionary Serpentine Dance, a performance that combined flowing silk costumes, innovative lighting, and swirling choreography to create mesmerizing visual effects.

Her work emphasized movement and light over traditional narrative, making her a trailblazer in avant-garde performance art. The Serpentine Dance was conceived from a show by Fuller (stage name Loïe) which she premiered at the Park Theatre in Brooklyn NY, 15 February, 1892.

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This spectacular Marie Louise Fuller Serpentine Dance choreography, is highlighted by the costumes and the light effects from several projectors equipped with powerful lighting systems operating with an electric arc. This video is from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

The credits cite production and ownership.

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N.B.
These videos were NOT originally filmed in colour showing the Fuller lighting and costume effects. These videos have been colourised–likely hand coloured frame by frame.

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on a stage fully covered with black velvet, her white silk takes on various shades of spectacular colours thanks to the Fuller light projections

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Loïe Fuller files ten patents and copyrights, mainly for her dance accessories; such as phosphorescent salts that she created herself and applies to her costumes; and for her lighting devices.

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Here we see one page of Fullers patent Nº 518347, for her “garment for dancers” dated 17 April 1894.

In 1896, Loïe Fuller danced at the Folies Bergère, the Mecca of Parisian life during the Belle Epoque period. She became one of the most important and highest paid artists in the show.

She is the “muse of Art Nouveau,” an artistic movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Fuller was the first to dance freely, and before her compatriot Isadora Duncan, who also revolutionized the practice of dance with her great freedom of expression.

The Fuller show is so successful that many imitators quickly adopted it. This video below is not Marie Louise Fuller. It may be Isadora Duncan but it’s hard to tell.

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we also see projectors fitted with large discs of coloured glass, called ‘light boxes’ intended for light projections in the larger venues

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In the Black Maria, William Heise (on camera) and William K. L. Dickson, are depicted in this illustration filming Annabelle Whitford performing her version of the Serpentine Dance, shown at the Vitascope premiere. Whitford was a Loïe Fuller imitator.

^{Image Peter Domankiewicz}

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Loïe Fuller used silk veils hung from the end of long wooden sticks under her costume, which she waved in a very coordinated manner.

On a stage fully covered with black velvet, her white silk takes on various shades of spectacular colours thanks to the Fuller light projections. A live performance would have been spectacular to see.

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In New York city in 1892, dancer Loïe Fuller debuted her much-copied Serpentine Dance, a work that typified her innovative choreography, dazzling electric lighting effects, and generous fabric budget.

^{Images Met Photos}

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The catalogue Clément and Gilmer from 1900 presents in its pages an “Artistic collection of paintings finely painted on glass for the projections known as: Magic Mantle, Butterfly Woman or Loïe Fuller.”

This video is produced by Archive.org and The Vintage News. Heads up–The second dancer seen colourised, is not Loïe Fuller. Runs two minutes, five seconds.

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We also see projectors fitted with large discs of coloured glass, called light boxes intended for light projections in the larger venues.

By the end of the 19th century, the lighting power of projection lanterns made it possible to use light projections in any kind of show.

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Right, a photograph from The Dance Collection, New York Public Library For The Performing Arts.

Left, Loïe Fuller dancing on an open lawn for the camera. Photograph by Samuel Joshua Beckett.

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Similar to what Zasu Pitts did, Marie took the ie from Marie, and the Lo from Louise to form her stage name. Finally adopting the European ‘diaeresis’ to the i, to make Loïe. Here is a report published in 1919 on the Fuller Serpentine Dance, published in La Science and La Vie.

BTW
Fullersburg, Illinois, was named after the Fuller family, specifically Benjamin Fuller, who was a key figure in the settlement’s history. The area, originally called Brush Hill, was settled by Benjamin Fuller and his family, who arrived from Broome County, New York, in 1835.

By 1851, Benjamin Fuller owned most of the land in the area and subdivided and platted it, at which point the name changed from Brush Hill to Fullersburg in honour of his family’s prominence and contributions to the community. 

Loïe was Benjamin’s niece.

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Dussaud also invented other devices, and worked for Pathé for a short period, driven to find a way to play sound with film.

Along with Auguste Baron, Henry Joly, and Henri Lioret, Dussaud was one of Europe’s early researchers in synchronizing sound and moving pictures.

Pictured, Dussaud working in his lab on his Microphonograph.

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The Dussaud as Dussaud himself called his Microphonograph found on pp172, 173, 174, 175 of Discovery– A Monthly Popular Journal of Knowledge, edited by A. S. Russell, London, volume I, January to December issue, 1920. Article by G. Frederic Lees.

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Dussaud’s first invention was the Microphonograph which was followed by the Teleoscope, and later the Multiphone.

The Microphonograph was initially designed as a hearing assistance device.

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Here is an article on Dussaud’s Microphonograph from the journal The Phonoscope in June 1897. A readable jpg image of this article can be seen at their website.

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along with Auguste Baron, Henry Joly, and Henri Lioret, Dussaud was one of Europe’s early researchers in synchronizing sound and moving pictures

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A second model of the Microphonograph in 1897 takes the form of a cabinet, seen below. By the age of twenty-three Dussaud was chair of Physics and Chemistry at the Faculty of Sciences, Geneva.

His work in electrical recording and synchronization of sound and Cinematographic images earned him accolades.

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In short, it’s a quality-control / preview device for lantern slides — handy for checking composition, cropping, colouring / tinting, or whether the slide is broken or dusty prior to a show.

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Most table viewers of the period combined a small, stable light source or reflectors, a condenser or diffuser and a simple lens or ground-glass screen so the operator could view the image at near-to-projection scale.

The Lanternoscope was mahogany on a solid base of cast iron. It was fitted with polished nickel on brass pins and was equipped with a high-magnification convex lens on the front and frosted glass on the back to distribute light evenly over the entire image surface.

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The 1892 Alfred Molteni table viewer called a Lanternoscope was designed and manufactured to examine lantern slides at high magnification to determine quality and imperfections, prior to presentation through the Magic Lantern.

Other brands of the Lanternoscope were made. In America, Anthony’s Lanternoscope was manufactured from at least 1894-1901 and is marked with their well-known nickel-plated tag engraved as E. and H.T. Anthony and Company Manufacturers, 591 Broadway, New York.

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^{All images The Mary Pickford Foundation}

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Mary made 52 films in 1909 when she was only sixteen. I’m compelled to share that I live thirty minutes from Mary’s birthplace. The Archaeological Board of Ontario honoured Mary with this plaque.

The house is long gone but in March of 1924, Mary returned and posed in front of it.

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a very special little girl was born in 1892–one of our first animated players

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Charlotte Smith seen on the left also known as Lottie Pickford was also born in Toronto. Pictured in 1905 with big sister, Mary, and photographed as a young film actress at the height of her career.

Mary was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound film role in Coquette in 1929. A Merchandising badge sold with Mary’s image as a child.

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Did you know that following fellow Canadian actress Florence Lawrence’s departure to Carl Laemmle’s Independent Moving Pictures (IMP), Mary was the Biograph Girl for about a year?

Images The Mary Pickford Foundation.

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And on the subject of syncing sound to film, Mary said……

1892-1906
CLERMONT-HUET CINEMATOGRAPHE DISC
HENRI-LOUIS HUET (1866 -?)
Another disc device, this one made by the combined effort of Clermont-Huet Paris, on behalf of The Animated Photograph Company. Image of Cinematographe Projector from G. Vitoux, La Nature, April 1907.

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In 1892, Henri Louis Huet took over from the optician François Alphonse Clermont (1828 – 1892). Maison Clermont founded in 1854 had specialized in binocular manufacture. In terms of Cinematography, Huet filed a series of patents in 1899.

This Cinematographe used an incandescent lamp and operated either by a clockwork movement, or by hand using a small crank. Huet installed a magnifying glass in front of the glass disc at the top where the motion was viewed.

^{Images Tangible Media Collection}

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Here is an illustration of the Cinematographe Clermont-Huet disc camera from G. Vitoux, La Nature, April 1907. All images Tangible Media Collection.

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1892
LEON GUILLAUME BOULY (1872 – 1932)
Léon Guillaume Bouly was a French inventor best known for creating the term ‘cinématographe,’ a pivotal contribution to the history of cinema. Think of how often the noun cinematographe and the pronoun Cinématographe are used.

Born in Paris, Bouly was an enigmatic figure about whom information I have discovered is hard to come by. His work however, I suggest, was built on the principles of Chronophotography. Prior to the Lumiere brothers naming and patenting their Cinematographe, Bouly had designed and built a machine he described as a  “reversible device of photography and optics for the analysis and synthesis of motions, [named] cinématographe Léon Bouly.”

Bouly named it a Cynématographe with a ‘y’ in a second patent in 1893-4 but fell into financial hardship and after 1894 the patent lapsed. The Lumiere’s liked the name with an ‘i’ and patented it for themselves naming theirs the Cinématographe.

^{Image The George Eastman House Technology Archive}

Bouly was a French inventor best known for creating the term “Cinématographe” [anglised] and developing an early motion picture device of the same name. Born in Paris, Bouly worked in the field of Chronophotography, a precursor to cinema that captured sequences of images to study motion.

On February 12, 1892, he patented a device called the “Cynématographe Léon Bouly.” First Christened with the name Cinébibliographe, it was a tall vertical hand-cranked camera that employed the same mechanism as the Cinématographe which Bouly had developed in 1893, before the Lumières seized the name following his patent lapse.

This apparatus was designed to record a series of images automatically and without interruption, using non-perforated film driven by a segmental roller and stopped intermittently by a pressure pad. On 27 December 1893, Bouly refined the name to “Cinématographe” and updated the patent to include projection capabilities, making the device theoretically capable of both filming and projecting moving images.

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modern historians agree that prior to the Lumières, Léon Bouly was the genuine creator of the term cinématographe

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This system is made up of two components:

🎞️ the Cinébibliographe camera
🎞️ the Cinébiblioscope projector

It engaged non-perforated 40mm film to take photographs on paper, which, once cut and assembled, played in the Cinébiblioscope. Despite these facts, little is known about Bouly’s life, and his contributions remain somewhat mysterious.

His device was not widely recognized during his time, and no contemporary press accounts that I can find confirm successful projections. Some sources, like Vincent Mirabel’s Histoire du cinéma pour les nuls (2008), claim the device was never built, even though two examples are preserved at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris, suggesting at least prototypes were constructed by a mechanic named Gaillard.

This is the projector that accompanied the Cinébibliographe camera when purchased. It came with a magnifying glass that roughly doubled the size of the images projected.

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Without perforations in the roll film, the sequencing was not smooth but jerky and failed to live up to the description found within the patent; “to obtain automatically and without interruption a series of analytical negatives of movement.“

^{Images The George Eastman House Technology Archive}

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_{Inset image George Eastman House}

Without perforations in the film roll, the sequencing was not smooth and failed to live up to the description found within the patent; “to obtain automatically and without interruption a series of analytical negatives of movement.”

While Bouly’s invention was theoretically sound, its practical success is debated, and some historians, like Vincent Mirabel, have questioned whether the devices were ever fully built or operational, despite their preservation.

Bouly’s contributions were overlooked in cinema histories, such as those by Georges Sadoul and Jean Mitry, but modern scholars recognize him as the originator of the term ‘cinématographe’ and a pioneer in film technology.

After 1894, Bouly appears to have abandoned cinematography, though he later patented a flexible-band phonograph with Abel Cholet in 1910. He remains a somewhat mysterious figure, with his legacy tied to his innovative yet underutilized contributions to the dawn of moving pictures.

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The Cinébibliographe was affordable enough for any amateur home enthusiast to use without any training. The machine came with four metres of film capable of producing 80 frames which was enough to make a great little home movie.

Bouly’s failure to pay patent fees in 1894 allowed the word cinématographe to enter the public domain, enabling the Lumière brothers to adopt it for their own device in 1895. The price for both devices was listed at 75 francs in 1893, equivalent today to $84US or €77EUR. Additional reels were 6 francs.

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This reference to Boy’s work photographing bullets in motion is taken from The History of Photography – From the Camera Obscura to The Beginning of The Modern Era Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, Thames and Hudson, London, 1969, p445.

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FAST FORWARD
MIT and the University of Twente conducted research into alternative injection methods using high-speed cameras photographing bullets travelling through apples, and water droplets through water drops.

One frame below.

^{Image Massachusetts Institute of Technology}

1893
THE MOTION SHOOTER
YOSYP ANDREEVICH TYMCHENKO (1852–1924)
ЙОСИП АНДРІЙОВИЧ ТИМЧЕНКО
Tymchenko was a Ukrainian mechanic, inventor, and engineer often cited in connection with late pre cinema motion picture projection. Born in the present-day Kherson region (then Russian Empire), he was largely self-taught and became chief mechanic at the Novorossiysk University (now Odessa University).

Tymchenko worked on precision instruments within the fields of astronomy and navigation, and had a reputation as a highly skilled constructor of mechanical devices. In 1893, along with physicist Mykola Lyubimov, he reportedly constructed a device he called the Kinematograph or the Snimatel Dvizhenii which is interpreted into English as a Motion Shooter.

It is said to have used a Geneva drive mechanism (Maltese cross) for intermittent film movement as well as a jumping mechanism invented by Tymchenko.

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THE MOSCOW EVENT
The apparatus supposedly projected short motion sequences such as horse races at the Odessa University in late 1893. However, unlike many other pre cinema pioneers, Tymchenko and Lyubimov did not commercialize or widely publicize their invention. Here is that documentation from The Polytechnic Museum in Russia, January 1894;

No surviving filmstrips or machines are known to exist. However, according to the Polytechnic Museum in Russia, Tymchenko presented at least two films on the Motion Shooter to the ninth congress of Russian Naturalists and Doctors in Moscow on 9 January of 1894. They are documented as being Darrowing Horseman and Copyter. Foto Promo adds that “This is evidenced in the minutes of the meetings.”

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A small but growing strand of scholarship writing on Eastern European early cinema have started to include Tymchenko as part of the regional prehistory of film

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The showing of these films lasted 10 days according to the informational resource Foto Promo and they took place in the hotel lobby according to Odessa University seen here. These accounts stress that Tymchenko used an intermittent ‘Snail‘ Maltese-cross-type mechanism and that he showed film to scientific audiences in early 1894 (January).

This narrative is prominent in Ukrainian press I have seen, as well as in local museums, and regional histories. Source: Joseph Timchenko and his Unprecedented Apparatus, The Odessa Journal, 2021.

Foto Prom has identified this image as the Tymchenko Kinematograph or Snimatel Dvizhenii or Motion Shooter, although they call it the Kimnetsospecome.

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_{Image the Odessa University}

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Ukrainian sources stress that Tymchenko deserves recognition as a pioneer of cinema, preceding several other pioneers in public projection. Pictured here, and found at the Polytechnic Museum (Политехнический музей) in Moscow is an image they state is what the jumping mechanism on the Kinematograph / Snimatel Dvizhenii / Motion Shooter looked like.

It was used to provide intermittent motion images during projection on the screen.

It seems to me that Tymchenko preceded the Lumière’s shop demonstration of their Cinématographe, on 22 March 1895 by fourteen months (Ramsaye, p215). Western scholarship I have noticed however, is more cautious: they routinely state that without surviving devices or films, his contribution is often treated as an interesting but unverified claim. I find this to be nonsense.

Yosyp Tymchenko was a skilled mechanic and inventor credited with building one of the first intermittent-motion projection devices, but his place in cinema history remains contested because the evidence is fragmentary and localized to Odessa.

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These works tend to present Tymchenko as an interesting and plausible local inventor who contributed technical ideas (intermittent movement mechanism) in the early 1890s — but they also note the evidentiary gaps and call for archival verification. Source: The Formation of the Film Business in Ukraine, Volodymyr Myslavskyi, The Apparatus Journal, 2023.

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Leading anglophone histories of early cinema typically base claims on:

1. contemporaneous publications
2. surviving machines/films
3. clear patent/publicity trails that led to widespread adoption

Pictured is the memorial plaque to Yosyp Timchenko at the IV International Film Festival.

Tymchenko’s story so far lacks at least two of those elements:

1. no surviving device or film print is known
2. and there is no robust, widely-discussed set of contemporary press reports or patent filings that placed his invention in the international circulation that would have affected the broader development of cinema

Consequently, most standard accounts either omit him or treat him as a regional actor rather than a global originator. You can see the contrast in the way Ukrainian/local sources elevate him while standard anglophone and Western surveys remain focused on better-documented motion picture pioneers. Source: Grigory Petrovich Novoseltsev.

This may all be accurate; however, I myself have posted numerous pre cinema pioneers both here and on my website that also don’t have proof that their contraptions existed and yet I treat them as part of history, deserving the rewards due them mostly due to their work having been witnessed by persons and the public.

It is clearly documented by first hand witnesses that the Motion Shooter was built, and projected films both privately and publicly.

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That revival is important, but historians still treat rediscovery claims cautiously until primary sources are published and examined. Nonetheless Ukrainian and regional historiography present him as an embryonic founder of cinema. The global history of cinema doesn’t change on plausible claims alone. I have learned that many times in thirty-five years.

Without surviving artifacts or clear contemporaneous documentation that can be examined physically, the claim stays plausible but unproven — important regionally, not yet dispositive internationally.

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Tymchenko deserves recognition as a pioneer of cinema, preceding several other pioneers in public projection

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Joseph is pictured here with his little girl Tamara in 1914. Tymchenko continued working at Odessa University until his death in 1924.

No verifiable photograph of the original Tymchenko projector is known in publicly accessible archives. The Polytechnic Museum in Moscow is often cited in Ukrainian sources as having a Tymchenko camera / apparatus labelled “the first cinematography … showing the tape,” but I couldn’t find an image from them to confirm the machine.

I found no archival photograph associated with the museum’s collection that is clearly labelled as Tymchenko’s device or similar.

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1893
MAGIC LANTERN ADVERTISING
WILLIAM JAMES HAWKINS
Hawkins created a mechanical device to automate the presentation of a sequence of advertisements, a precursor to modern slide projectors and automated digital signage. It was an important step in using the Magic Lantern for continuous, unattended commercial display as several were doing in the late 19^th century.

The full patent title for British Patent No. 7609 of 1893 is “Improvements in Projecting Signs and Advertisements by Means of the Magic Lantern or the Like” filed in 2 May 1893 with the complete specification accepted on 2 May 1894. The patent was granted under the British Patents Act of 1883 and represents an early innovation in automated visual display technology.

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Hawkin’s Magic Lantern device used a drum or cylinder on which a series of lantern slides were placed. This drum was designed to rotate automatically to bring a new picture into the projection beam. The rotation was controlled by a clockwork mechanism and an escapement system.

The specific control method involved a pin being lifted from a slot in the drum’s edge, allowing the drum to advance one step, changing the slide. This ensured the slide stayed perfectly still during projection and then quickly moved to the next one at a preset interval.

In the world of 19^th century photographic and optical inventors, it is common for individuals who registered only a niche patent or two, but were not major manufacturers, to have very limited publicly recorded biographical information.

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Hawkins created a mechanical device to automate the presentation of a sequence of advertisements, a precursor to modern slide projectors and automated digital signage

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No images of Hawkin’s Magic Lantern device have been found.

Due to the age of the document, full verbatim text is sparse in my digital sources, but here’s a representative excerpt from the abridged specification (Class 97: Optical Instruments and Photography, 1890–1897, pp456–457):  

1893
THE CINÉBIBLIOGRAPHE
LÉON BOULY (1872-1932)
The Cinébibliographe was a tall vertical hand-cranked camera that employed the same mechanism as the Cinématographe which Bouly had developed in 1893, before the Lumières seized the name following his patent lapse.

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the machine came with four metres of film capable of producing 80 frames which was enough to make a great little home movie

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This system is made up of two components:

🎞️ the Cinébibliographe camera
🎞️ the Cinébiblioscope projector

It engaged non-perforated 40mm film to take photographs on paper, which, once cut and assembled, played in the Cinébiblioscope.

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The Cinébibliographe was affordable enough for any amateur home enthusiast to use without any training. The machine came with four metres of film capable of producing eighty frames which was enough to make a great little home movie.

This is the projector that accompanied the Cinébibliographe camera when purchased. It came with a magnifying glass that roughly doubled the size of the images projected.

The price for both devices was listed at seventy-five francs in 1893, equivalent today to $84US or €77EUR.

Additional reels were six francs.

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1893
LIKE A PRE CINEMA DIGITAL BILLBOARD
J. A. LAUDER
Lauder was a British inventor active in the late 19th century, best known for his 1893 UK patent application No. 12456. This was a coin-operated or hand-cranked rotating cylinder display designed to show continuous panoramic advertisements.

This patent described a mechanical advertising apparatus using a rotating barrel to display panoramic advertisements. It was part of the era’s wave of innovative coin-operated or automatic display devices, similar to early pre cinema attractions like Mutoscopes or Kinetoscopes but focused on commercial promotion rather than entertainment.

Like a mechanical version of a modern digital billboard, but in 1893 — a Moving Panorama that looped endlessly. A cylindrical barrel or drum covered with printed panoramic images rotated continuously or via a handle/coin mechanism. As the barrel turned, viewers saw a seamless Moving Panorama or long, continuous scenes of product displays, scenic views with brand logos, or animated ads, creating an eye-catching, dynamic display.

Something we see today on a continuous basis either through cable or streaming. Designed for shops, streets, or public spaces to draw crowds and promote goods like tobacco, soaps, or clothing. Part of the pre cinema advertising boom between 1890 and 1905.

This J. A. Lauder should not be confused with another J. A. Lauder who in Elphinstone, Manitoba operated a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post during the same year.

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These illustrated-photos were taken by Demenÿ in 1893 and reviewed in the article.

Two bobbins carried the film passing behind the disk shutter in line with the aperture formerly known as the objective. Pictured is the camera shown opened, from the journal and another illustration of a gentleman holding and operating it.

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not being interested in the physiological aspect of Chronophotography as Marey was, Demenÿ defended the benefits of Chronophotography for commercial and vernacular reasons

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This reproduction shown below, is based on a surviving camera in the Cinémathèque Française collection. When Marey didn’t help produce six of these cameras for commercial sale, Demenÿ produced them himself with what became a popular and trustworthy film mechanism – the beater movement.

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The camera was patented in 1893. Below we see different angles of the precisely constructed device made by The Race to Cinema team. Using exacting specs of Demenÿ’s patent including the schematics, the original machine itself and help from the Cinémathèque Française.

^{Images Race to Cinema}

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From the Demenÿ patent of 1893 we can read and see the movement of the film, interpreted by author and historian J. L. Breton.

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Here from the Scientific American Supplement article, is the writer’s argument for and/or against the superiority of the motion picture camera’s instantaneous photographic capability, versus the inability of the posed portrait photograph to be considered motion photography;

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not being interested in the physiological aspect of Chronophotography as Marey was, Demenÿ defended the benefits of Chronophotography for commercial and vernacular reasons

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Here from my first edition is Demenÿ and his twelve Chronophotograph illustrations from the photographs as they would have appeared on a disk.

The magazine La Nature published them and I’ve made this animation of how they would have appeared once projected through the Phonoscope.

^{Animation HOTDOC}

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The editor of La Nature closes the article that I began with here in the Scientific American Supplement of 27 October 1894.

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The Chrono-de-Poche used 15mm film with a Parnaland-style central perforation, which was the smallest format available for more than two decades until the debut of the 9.5mm format by Pathé.

Photos by Carl Louis Gregory in 1957, in the Collection of Eric Berndt, Berndt Museum.

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From its first appearance in 1900, it was advertised as an “amateur cinematograph” and could be loaded in daylight as could the Chronophotographe d’Amateur. It had spools of 16.5 feet with centre-perforated 15mm film, totalling a puny five hundred frames.

^{Images Antiq-Photo}

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Not being interested in the physiological aspect of Chronophotography as Marey was, Demenÿ defended the benefits of Chronophotography for commercial and vernacular reasons.

In La photographie de la parole Demenÿ wrote;

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I am not sure about the grimace Demenÿ referred to, but whoever this little boy was, I am not sure he agrees. Somebody said something funny to this boy and I sure would like to know what it was.

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READ the full Scientific American Supplement article here, with all the images at The Hathi Trust Digital Library.

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Comptoir géneral de photographie is today simply known as Gaumont. It is still in business and warrants the reference of “world’s oldest surviving film company.”

Jules developed an early interest in motion pictures, commercializing the Biographe Français as the Pygmalion in 1897 and patenting the Zoographe, a device for capturing and projecting moving images, with Joseph Dubouloz in 1898.

His father Isidore having worked in optics in Switzerland, brought his sons Jules and Paul to Paris and opened Demaria Frères in February. By 1897 the Pygmalion camera projector resulted.

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Jules Demaria became interested in cinema very early on due to his father. In 1897 he filed for a patent for “an improved device called a Zoograph, for the photography, observation and projection of animated scenes.”

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Here are Demaria company logos, and the only small blurry image I’ve ever seen of the Pygmalion.

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THE PYGMALION
From Eugène Trutat in his book La Photographie Animée published in 1899 and in his own words;

“An axle moved by hand a crank projecting outside the box, carries a pinned wheel which drives a Vaucanson chain. This controls the main axle of the apparatus, an axle terminated at one of its ends by a flywheel responsible for regulating the movement, at the other by a small pulley which controls the drive axle of the reception reel. In the middle of the shaft in question is wedged a toothed wheel which will mesh with a small diametre pinion which carries: 1. an angle wheel actuating the shutter; 2. an eccentric carrying a connecting rod which gives the film drive cylinder a jerky movement, which produces the film stops during the opening time of the shutter and drives it the length of a frame during its closing.”

Images are figures 83 on page 99 and 85 on page 100.

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Image figure 84 on p99.

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Quite interestingly the Demaria Pygmalion used on the inside of it’s inner workings, a Vaucanson chain. Remember the Jacques de Vaucanson defecating duck? His automaton contained that type of chain and was named after Vaucanson.

After parting ways with his brother, Jules founded Etablissements J. Demaria in 1911 at 35 Rue de Clichy, Paris, registering the JiDé trademark. His company focused on professional cinema projectors and marketed some English Biokam cameras.

In 1912, he became president of the Chambre Syndicale de la Cinématographie, establishing himself as a key figure in French cinema during the 1910s and 1920s. His firm was acquired by the Société Continentale de Photographie (Contipho) in the 1930s.

1893
THE ERAGRAPH
GEORGE HAYDON AND FRANK HARVEY URRY
Haydon and Urry Limited was a late 19th / early 20^th century maker of moving image equipment that produced phonographs, coin-operated machines and moving image viewers and projectors including something called the Eragraph,which is listed as a film projector.

Within four years of start-up, Haydon & Urry applied for a patent on 10 February 1897 for their Eragraph design. According to sources, the Eragraph was durable and reliable and became popular with travelling showmen in that era.

The Eragraph was a 35mm, hand-cranked film projector that used a Maltese-cross intermittent, and examples are described as made of brass, and relatively compact, and robust.

They also produced the Autocosmoscope, a penny-in-slot viewer showing lifelike reproductions of living pictures.

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_{Images Cinémathèque française, photos Stephane Dabrowski}

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The Science Museum Group holds a Haydon & Urry Eragraph Projector as does the Cinémathèque française. Film history reference notes and French cinémathèque catalogue entries place Haydon & Urry’s machines on the market from May 1896 onward and discuss their supply of both machines and films.

The Eragraph isn’t a blockbuster name but it’s important for understanding small British makers who served local exhibitors and showmen during cinema’s first years. Haydon & Urry’s strategy appeared to be selling hardware and then producing short films to feed that hardware, like many other cinema pioneers.

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The Magic Lantern Journal Annual (1898–1899) advertisement for the Eragraph called it “The Kinematograph of the era.” ― Cinémathèque française.

_{Images Cinémathèque française, photos Stephane Dabrowski}

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Haydon & Urry were known to supply noted fairground exhibitor Randall Williams with films including Jubilee procession footage of 22 June 1897. Williams is celebrated for having used the first Eragraph in his Victorian era fairground exhibitions.

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The Vérascope Revolving Stereoscope is based on a patent by Alexander Beckers, of whom I will speak more about later. Also called Beckers Tabletop Stereoviewer. Pictured here is the Vérascope Revolving Stereoscope of 1893 and the Alexander Beckers Tabletop Stereoviewer 1893.

^{Images André Ruiter}

The architecture of Richard’s Vérascope Revolving Stereoscope is based on a chained structure that includes holders for stereo views.

The stereo views are seen one by one as the chain is revolved.

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1893
SIEGMUND LUBIN (1851-1923)
Lubin was a German optician who moved to Philadelphia. He envisioned a great future for the fledgling movie industry. He is said to be the first to attempt the mass marketing of the movies.

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WATCH The Bold Bank Robbery (1904) made by Siegmund Lubin. This film is one of the aforementioned re-makes Lubin filmed. You remember the Porter/Edison 1903 The Great Train Robbery. From the Films by the Year collection.

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Lubin will build and operate the largest working movie studios in downtown Philadelphia, Florida, and Los Angeles

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Side view of an 1898 “New Improved Portable Spoolbank” Lubin Cineograph on the right.

Lubin’s answer to Edison’s Spoolbank (left), was to have a film box under the projector doing the same job—looping or, running continuously.

^{Image Soterios Gardiakos}

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WATCH The Outcast and the Bride (1903) from Siegmund Lubin. As Lubin biographer Joseph P. Eckhardt tells us in the description;

“Lubin’s 1903 film illustrating The Outcast and the Bride survives and is the only vestige of Lubin’s myriad attempts at coordinating sound and film extant today. The morality tale of two friends, Kate and Alice, was a perfect vehicle for an illustrated song…Shot in Lubin’s glass-enclosed studio atop 912 Arch Street, the film was originally 250 feet. The surviving footage at the Library of Congress contains six shots utilising four different sets but seems to be missing footage.”

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having been sued by Edison several times as well as the government, Lubin responded by building a chain of theatres and studios

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A Siegmund Lubin designed and manufactured 1898 Cineograph Stereopticon with reels, from a reprint of an 1898 Lubin catalogue seen on the left.

In a few years, Lubin will build and operate the largest working movie studios in downtown Philadelphia, Florida, and Los Angeles. On the right a clipping of Lubin’s Los Angeles studio from an unknown newspaper.

^{Image Soterios Gardiakos}

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The Cineograph sold for $150 when it first went on the market. Lubin later became good friends with Edison.

Sivan was a notable Swiss inventor and clockmaker, whose career intersected with the early development of cinema and sound reproduction.

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Sivan was involved in the emerging field of moving pictures between 1893 and 1898.

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Being interested in the reproduction of sound, Swiss patent № 4918 was issued 21 February 1892 for a Talking Pocket Watch to Sivan (hello Dick Tracy). In 1898 an improved version was granted patent 7 June № 605192. Then he went on to build his Le Bijou Phonograph.

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From March 1895, Sivan held the Swiss franchise for the Edison Kinetoscope, Kinetophone, and Lumière Cinématographe. On May 23, 1896, he filed a patent for a 35mm stereoscopic camera/projector, which was co-signed by E. Dalphin.

While this camera may not have gone beyond the prototype stage, fragments of his film and a Sivan-Dalphin camera/projector are preserved, as you will see just below.

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Housed at the Eastman Museum in Rochester NY is the no-name hybrid built by Casimir Sivan. It has all the functions of a camera and can be reconfigured to be a projector as well. My thanks to Damien Spader, Technology Collection Manager, George Eastman Museum.

These are the thirteen different angles that Damien sent me.

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Sivan later joined forces with the inventor François Dussaud (of whom I have referenced before), helping to develop the Dussaud Microphonograph and a method of synchronising image and sound (1897).

Casimir Sivan’s work highlights the innovative spirit of the late 19th century and his significant, though mostly overlooked, role in the history of cinema and sound technology.

1893
THOMAS HENRY BLAIR (1855-1919)
A Canadian emigrating from Nova Scotia to Connecticut, Blair creates a photographic company called Blair Tourograph Company and during 1892 and 1893, provided all of Edison’s flexible celluloid film, due to issues Eastman and Edison had.

The Blair Tourograph camera can be seen in the centre of the brochure below.

This continued until 1896, with Blair making most of the Celluloid roll film used in the Kinetoscope. The next year Eastman purchased and absorbed the Blair Tourograph Company into Eastman Kodak.

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The Tourograph by Thomas Henry Blair was a complete, portable photographic system. Originally introduced in 1878, the first Tourograph was a kit containing everything needed (including the chemistry) by amateur field photographers, to expose and develop wet collodion plates.

^{Images Larry S. Pearce}

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^{Images Larry S. Pearce}

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Blair creates a photographic company called ‘Blair Tourograph Company’ and during 1892 and 1893, provided all of Edison’s flexible celluloid film

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^{Image Larry S. Pearce}

^{Image Larry S. Pearce}

The Tourograph by Thomas Henry Blair.

1893
THOMAS ALVA EDISON (1847-1931)
Edison builds what is likely the first professional movie studio. It was nic-named the Black Maria and was situated in New Jersey being nothing more than a shack made out of tar paper and wood.

Some of the most famous and well-known experimental films were photographed there. The clipping pictured calls it the Kinetographic Theatre which was it’s real name before nic-named as the Black Maria.

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it was named the Black Maria by Dickson and others because it reminded them of a police paddy wagon which is what they were called at the time

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In 1912 Biograph built a film studio of their own which looked identical to Edison’s Black Maria (illustration left).

Biograph placed their shack on the roof of 841 Broadway. It sat on a circular track as did Edison’s did, in order to follow the sun.

The Roosevelt Building at 839-841 Broadway on the corner of East 13th Street, near Union Square, was named after Cornelius Roosevelt, the grandfather of Theodore Roosevelt, who lived on this block in the middle of the 18th century.

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For anyone travelling to or living in New Jersey US, here’s the location of the Black Maria, and the Edison work location in West Orange plus the rebuilt Black Maria.

He was an Austro-Hungarian engineer and instrument maker working in Vienna who built a Chronophotographic camera which in English was “photographic serial apparatus.” An overlooked but genuine pre cinema device.

Instead of single glass plates, it used sensitized paper or roll film, allowing for a rapid succession of exposures. Brandauer marketed it toward scientific and technical uses such as motion studies, physiological experiments, or ballistics but not entertainment.

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The device advanced the medium incrementally and exposed through a rotating shutter similar in spirit to Marey’s Chronophotographic guns or Anschütz’s work, but adapted for continuous sequences.

The camera was described in the Verhandlungen der kaiserlich-königlichen Gesellschaft der Ärzte in Vienna (Wien) in 1893 and in the Photographische Rundschau in 1893 and 1894.

Heidelberg University Library Patent Archives state “Patents granted in the German Empire for Photographic objects” is the only verified source I found authenticating the patent Nº 74792, the only information available seen here.

Richard Brandauer identified his “Chronophotographic device” as having;

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Brandauer filed an Austrian patent (Österreichisches Patentamt) in 1893 for the apparatus. It appears under the German name Photographischer Serienapparat in several contemporary bibliographies of scientific instruments.

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Here are figures 3 and 4 from Brandauer’s patent Nº 74792. Unfortunately, surviving photos/drawings of a working machine are not readily found in the usual archives.

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The back of each camera had its own shutter which was cocked before the wheel was revolved; when the wheel moved, the gadget activated each shutter in front of the single lens, for a sequence of instantaneous photographs. At least this was the idea.

If it was ever built is unknown. Brandauer’s work sits in the same lineage as Étienne-Jules Marey, Ottomar Anschütz, and Eadweard Muybridge, but his name is less well known.

His system didn’t directly become a motion picture camera, but it belongs squarely to the chronophotographic transition that led to cinema.

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outside of science, its not Sallie’s hooves that are best recalled. It’s the movies that E. J. Muybridge is best remembered for

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Some of the animated visuals are quite sophisticated, with various combinations of animal and human movement patterns. The Zoopraxiscope may have influenced Edison and Dickson’s Kinetoscope, “the first commercial film exhibitor” as suggested by chronicler Gordon Hendricks.

Muybridge’s Chronophotography of horses in motion began in 1872 at Leland Stanford’s stock farm near Palo Alto California. His work there was irregular until 1881. His most consistent and concentrated period was between 1877 and 1878.

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Muybridge demonstrated his Zoopraxoscope in a lecture series titled Descriptive Zoopraxography in the Zoopraxographical Hall, pictured in illustration and photograph, at the Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893.

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The Zoopraxoscope glass disks were painted by Erwin F. Faber and Thomas Eakins. These painted disks were then printed onto new discs photographically. The Langenheim Hyalotype process was available since 1850 but I have never come across this as the process used.

Sallie Gardner at a Gallop was a watershed moment in pre cinema history and helped scientist’s recognise animal locomotion. However, outside of science its not Sallie’s hooves that are best recalled. It’s our movies that E. J. Muybridge is best remembered for.

Below, is Annie G. and her rider painted onto a Zoopraxoscope disk from the original photographs.

1893
PROJECTED ADVERTISING
ÉMILE CHASSERAUX (1859- at least 1922)
Chasseraux was a French Military man, engineer and inventor who was granted a patent No. 16785 on 6 September, 1893 by the French Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle (INPI) for his Rotating Disc Mechanism.

_{Photograph Paula Christina Louis Dias}

The device featured a large, horizontally or vertically mounted disc approximately 50-100 cm in diametre, based on similar contemporary designs, that rotates continuously via a simple clockwork or hand-crank motor.

The rotation speed is controlled to be slow and steady, perhaps 1-2 revolutions per minute, to allow viewers to perceive changes without motion blur.

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A series of 6 to 12 painted or printed glass transparencies (thin, translucent sheets of some kind) are affixed around the periphery of the disc. These are illuminated from behind by oil lamps, gaslights, or early electric bulbs.

Each transparency portrays a sequential element of an advertisement, for example a bottle of wine appearing empty or the bottle gradually filling with liquid, or the bottle full, with a label promoting the brand.

Letting AI read the full description of Chasseraux’s 1893 Rotating Disc Mechanism, here’s what it thinks it looked like.

This creates an illusion of motion or transformation, predating modern Flip Books or early film projectors like the Zoetrope. The disc is housed in a wooden or metal frame with a viewing aperture to focus attention on one or two transparencies at a time.

Reflectors or mirrors enhance light diffusion for nighttime visibility. The system could be wall-mounted or freestanding, making it portable for travelling salesmen or fairground use.

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The patent specifications emphasize durability (transparencies protected by a glass cover to prevent breakage) and modularity (easy replacement of images for different advertisers). Claims cover the unique combination of rotation with backlit transparencies to produce “apparent movement” for promotional purposes.

This invention emerged in an era when advertising was shifting from print media to visual spectacles, influenced by the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle, which showcased early motion devices.

Similar patents around 1893 include Emile Reynaud’s Théâtre Optique for projected animations. Chasseraux’s design was uniquely tailored for commerce like promoting beverages, soaps, or medicines rather than personal entertainment.

Records suggest installations in Parisian department stores such as Le Bon Marché by 1895, where it drew crowds by simulating product “magic.”

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THE LUMINOGRAPHE
On April 27, 1896, Émile Chasseraux residing at 9 rue Duperré in Paris, filed the Luminographe patent, a reversible Chronophonotographic apparatus that could be used for shooting and projection. Unfortunately, I have not found any images.

To exploit his invention, he teamed up with Pierre Gaudin, industrialist, and Ferdinand Bellet, and founded Chasseraux et Cie, on May 21, 1896, whose object was “the production and enhancement of a so-called Luminographe Chasseraux, apparatus used to photograph and project by light animated or eventful scenes.” 

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The Rotating Disc Mechanism was limited by manual rotation and fire risks from lamps, but it paved the way for 20^th century neon signs and electric animated billboards. By 1900, variants incorporated electric motors. Émile Chasseraux was a Parisian mechanic with a focus on optical gadgets.

He later patented a stereoscopic camera in 1922 and called it “Le Self-Photo.”

Little personal biography survives of Émile Chasseraux, but he exemplifies the artisan-inventors of Belle Époque France.

Images of this 1922 Self-Photo et Stéréo-Mondain Stereoscopic Camera are from the FBS Fundación Private Collection.

1893
MISS BARENCO ON THE IRON WIRE
ALBERT LONDE (1858-1917)
Adding three more lenses to his nine-lens camera of 1882, Albert Londe now uses twelve lenses to photograph a succession of images of not only patients in a variety of movements, but also a circus performer with a parasol.

The 12-lens camera was illustrated in the journal La Nature, 1893. Londe’s multiple-lens cameras electrically triggered shutter system was measured by a metronome and allowed for a very speedy sequence of shots.

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This animation is made from the 12 engravings made by the famed French artist Poyet from the original twelve photographs made by Londe. Her name is identified as Miss Barenco in the La Nature write-up by Londe, and she was a circus performer with Nouveau Cirque, carrying out a high wire act with a parasol.

These engravings appeared in La Nature in 1893. The twelve pictures are identified in the publication as Figure 1.

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Londe, who was the head of the Salpêtrière laboratory and associated with the famed Doctor Charcot, utilized his chronophotographic cameras to examine hysteria and other disorders. He also shot stunning photos of ballerinas and dancers, including the cancan, which I have previously displayed.

From what I can conclude, the photographs of Miss Barenco ere a test for the 12 lens camera. The series is similar to a film sequence. Pictured is the illustration Poyet made of the Londe 12 lens camera.

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From the La Nature article submitted by Londe for its November 1893 issue, we learn that “It is necessary that the tests obtained have a sufficient dimension and a sufficiently comprehensible model so that they can be studied with ease” and that “the camera was built on our premises by Mr. Lucien LeRoy, an engineer.”  Londe also wrote that “the apparatus is transportable, which has already allowed us to obtain a series of images, either in the countryside or at the seaside.”

He also concluded the three-page submission with “Today, and as an example, we will give (fig. 1) a facsimile of one of her nude photographs, depicting a balance beam on the iron wire. Miss Barenco, from the Nouveau Cirque, who was pleased to pose especially for readers of La Nature, in this print, a roll from right to left, a movement she repeats several times in a row, her legs remaining straight. The series is complete in ten prints. The last, must represent the beginning of the same movement but in reverse. The twelve prints were taken in one frame. Each of them measures 7×7 inches.”

The nude photographs he referenced were not printed. Pictured are twelve test photographs taken of Miss Barenco, but not of the animation we saw. These are different test chronophotographs made on the new camera.

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“In closing, we feel we should thank all those who have been our valuable collaborators, and who have allowed us to bring our ideas from the field of photography. We should also not forget our vehement master M. Charcot, who has always encouraged our research in the very interesting field of medical photography and whom we saw for the last time when he did us the honour of coming to see the new laboratory in operation, built under our direction, in his department on the Ile de la Salpetriere.” 

_{-A. Londe, La Nature issue 1067, 11 November 1893, pp 370-374}

Pictured are pages 372 and 375 of the La Nature article.

1893
THE AUTOCOSMOSCOPE
GEORGE HAYDON AND FRANK HARVEY URRY
Haydon and Urry Limited was a late 19th / early 20th century maker of moving image equipment that produced phonographs, coin-operated machines and moving image viewers and projectors, including something called the Autocosmoscope.

It was a penny-in-the-slot viewer showing ‘lifelike reproductions of living pictures.’ The keyword here is ‘lifelike’ because ‘living pictures’  is misleading: the device did not show moving film; rather it showed still stereo images. It was aimed at showmen in the fairgrounds and public arcades.

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According to Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema (Denis Gifford 2004) it was advertised as “the most perfect penny-in-slot seeing machine ever produced’ showing ‘lifelike reproductions of living pictures.”

_{Images from Penny Machines}

However, the advertiser is not mentioned. Haydon and Urry Limited opened their doors in 1893. Company literature and secondary accounts claim the Autocosmoscope was marketed to piers, pavilions and showmen.

Image from Penny Machines

1894
SERIES PHOTOGRAPHIC CAMERA
MAX MAYER
A motion camera designed by Mayer will photograph moving objects the patent states, that could be reproduced “as if in motion.” This appears in the patent digest of The American Amateur Photographer for 1894. Much is known of this man but little of his apparatus outside of his patent.

Henry V. Hopwood’s 1899 survey of motion-picture technology describes Mayer’s patent as introducing a new “step-by-step” intermittent feed using a tappet and pawl arrangement—i.e., the film (or plate series) advances one frame at a time, halts for exposure, then advances again. It’s presented with a figure (his Fig. 80) as part of the chronology of pre cinema camera mechanisms.

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Mayer’s design sits in the pre Lumière/early-1890s wave of inventions chasing reliable intermittent motion for series photography / “living pictures.” It’s one of the documented antecedents to later standardized cine camera movements. The Mayer US patent is numbered 525991 and was granted 11 September 1894 although Mayer had been working on it since 1892.

The Smithsonian’s Gordon Hendricks Papers also lists an entry for M. Mayer, Series Photographic Camera (1894), grouped with other late-19^th century motion/series devices.

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According to Henry V. Hopwood in Living Pictures, 1899, figure 80, on p85, he provides a detailed legend and description on the workings of the Mayer US patent is № 525991 for us;

“On September 24, 1892, Mayer filed an American specification (No. 525,991), which shows a new form of step-by-step motion (Fig. 80). A tappet, P, with inclined faces, is drawn to and fro between parallel guides by means of a crank, C, and each time the frame carrying it reaches the top or bottom of its stroke the inclined face of the tappet strikes the inclined face of a tooth, T, thus driving the drum onwards.

This forward motion ended, the tappet enters the straight portion between two teeth, and so steadies the wheel. On its return journey it leaves this space centred against the slide, and the circle of teeth consisting in an odd number, there is naturally a tooth ready placed for acting on when the tappet reaches the end of its stroke. After the wheel has been steadied by the tappet, a slight pressure is maintained by detent-springs to prevent accidental displacement.”

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Apparently, this camera was capable of exposures of between 25 to 50 frames per second. One especially intriguing feature of this camera is that Mayer meant for the images to be used to replicate motion either;

🎦 on a disk

🎦 on a magic wheel

🎦 or on a stroboscope

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When Mayer applied for his US patent on 24 September 1892, he identified himself as a subject of the King of Bavaria, residing at Munich, Germany.

1894
HONOURABLE MENTION
THE KATHOSCOPE
Limited historical records exist for the Kathoscope, but it appears to be a rare or variant optical viewing device from the 19^th century era of ‘philosophical toys,’ or scientific amusements exploring light and vision.

Likely a Peephole-style instrument that may have used sequential images or rotating cards to create illusions of motion or depth, akin to pre cinema gadgets. The name suggests a focus on ‘katha’ from Greek and Latin roots for ‘downward’ viewing and ‘scope’ meaning to ‘view,’ potentially for examining small objects or simple animations.

It doesn’t appear in major optical toy catalogues I’ve seen, suggesting it was an obscure or regional invention, possibly German or French, used in educational settings to demonstrate persistence of vision. No patents or detailed descriptions surfaced in my search for primary or secondary sources.

No name or date has been associated with The Kathoscope.

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Although Alberini applied for his patent in 1894, it took a year for the Italian government to approve it and he ended up receiving it twenty days after the Lumière patent for their Cinematographe came through.

Below is Alberini and his schematic for patent Nº 245032 at 16 frames per second.

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In 1899, Alberini opened a movie theatre in Florence and in 1904, one in Rome called Cinema Moderno, right. Interestingly, the New York Times obituary in 1937 gave credit to Filoteo Alberini as “the inventor of motion picture devices.”

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The Cinematografo Moderno and Modernetto were decorated in a Beaux Arts style, with painted ceilings containing cherubs. The twin screens were the prime city centre cinemas in Rome for many years.

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the Cinepanoramica concept would play a hand as other systems did, and morph into what we knew as Technirama

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WATCH Filoteo Alberinis’ first film La presa di Roma from 1905. The 2005 restoration is by Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, the National Film Library of Italy. Production stills replace some missing frames. Runs six minutes.

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FILOTEO ALBERINI’S CINEPANORAMICA
Later in his career as a pioneer of Cinematography and Italian Cinema, Filoteo Alberini created and patented his Cinépanorámica for panoramic filming. The system included a special camera and projector capable of capturing a 90° panoramic view, roughly double the coverage of standard lenses.

Its film frame was approximately 1.5× larger than the norm, enabling grander depth and more visible background even in close-ups. Although technically promising, it never achieved mass adoption due to logistical challenges: theaters and projection systems required major modification, and pre-existing films were incompatible.

Nonetheless, its concepts fed into later developments like Technirama and widescreen anamorphic systems.

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Cinépanorámica was an early Italian widescreen invention that aimed to give viewers a panoramic, immersive visual experience—way ahead of its time—but it never got the chance to take off before film industry standards moved in other directions.

In 1926 Alberini sold the patent for his Cinépanorámica wide-screen system to William Fox. Over the decades the Cinépanorámica concept would play a hand as other systems did, and morph into what we knew as Technirama, a film frame twice the size of Cinemascope.

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A Cinépanorámica image of Filoteo Alberini by Stefano Anselmi.

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In the centre is a steel art statue in 2017 by Roberto Joppolo commemorating Alberini and his Kinetografo in Orte, Italy. Notice, the Kinetografo makes up the torso of the body.

The Maréorama falls nicely within the history of pre cinema and the Moving Panorama storytelling tradition, just as cinema itself begins to come into its own.

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D’Alési spent a year travelling to draw all the stages of this journey in a series of notebooks. On his return, he hired ten painters who reproduced his landscapes on two enormous canvas screens 42.65 feet high by 2,706 feet long (>1/2 mile).

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the Maréorama stage acted as the ship’s deck; and as soon as the patron came aboard, they were engulfed in a multimedia display that stimulated all of their senses

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the D’Alési Maréorama continued to morph in the 19^th century, into an immersive and surround sound motion spectacle

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On the right is the Maréorama, from the Brian Coe book The History of Movie Photography, New Jersey Westfield, Eastview Editions, UK, 1981, on page 24.

On the left is the patent schematic for the Maréorama filed in 1894, which he first called the Tideorama.

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Below we have;

🎦 The Maréorama theme music written by Henri Kowalski
🎦 The Maréorama building in an illustration sitting alongside the Eiffel Tower
🎦 A colour postcard of the Maréorama
🎦 A ticket to the Maréorama which cot 100 francs

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SEE Maréorama Resurrected: An Illustrated Lecture by Erkki Huhtamo running 58:18.

00:23 ► 23:00 An Historical Lecture
23:02 ► 44:51 The Maréorama
44:55 ► 57:00 Concluding with some more pre cinema

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Once aboard the Maréorama, they were transformed into passengers who were guaranteed the same feelings that they would have had during a real cruise on the Mediterranean Sea. Including sea sickness for some. From the journal Forum+ volume 28 Nº 3, pp. 24-35.

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This illustration shows the various devices used. From the journal Forum + volume 28 Nº 3, pp. 24-35.

BUCKING BRONCO 1894
Filmed with real cowboy Lee Martin (member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show) in 1894 by The Edison Manufacturing Company for viewing in the Kinetoscope.

Photographed with the Kinetograph by Dickson and Heise. Runs 24 seconds at 30 fps from silentfilmhouse.

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Below, the interior of the Edison Kinetoscope Parlour at 1155 Broadway New York, 1894.

Edison, like his Phonograph, sold his Kinetoscope and films through a group of self-funded entrepreneurs known as the Kinetoscope Company (Andrew Holland, Thomas Lombard and others).

Raff and Gammon eventually became the Kinetoscope Company’s major agents.

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Edison called the device a Kinetoscope using the Greek words kineto meaning movement and scopo meaning to watch.

Images of Edison’s Kinetoscope both internal and external from the Science Museum Group are pictured here.

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Here is that very well-known photograph of a Kinetoscope parlour in San Francisco ca. 1894–95.
With and without the famous stain.

^{Images the Bess Bower Dunn Museum}

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Pictured is Amet’s home on North Avenue, Waukegan and in behind the house is his backyard laboratory. This is where he developed his film and worked on his inventions. Both buildings were razed in 1966.

^{Images Bess Bower Dunn Museum}

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Amet produced war films shooting miniatures in a bathtub to feign seafaring clashes

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Waukegan’s Bess Bower Dunn Museum curator and Lake County Historian Diana Dretske explains some of the features of the Magniscope to the Chicago Tribune.

^{Photograph Jim Robinson, Chicago Tribune}

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^{Images TechnoGallerie ▼}

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THE AMET ECHOPHONE / METAPHONE
Amet also created the first spring-wound motor for phonographs (three pictured) in November 1891, which he commercialised in 1894.

His Echophone was originally called the Metaphone with meta being an anagram of his name.

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The Echophone was “a Graphophone or Device for Reproducing Sounds from Sound Writings” as his 20 November 1895 patent application stated. Patent Nº 562694 was granted 23 June, 1896.

^{Echophone image Antique Phonograph Society}

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The Echophone was an early cylinder phonograph with a distinct tone arm that had tone arm pressure.

In 1896 the American Graphophone Company sued Amet saying his design violated their AGC patent.

AGC won forcing Amet to end production.

^{Images Antique Phonograph Society}

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_{Images Bess Bower Dunn Museum}

From the Dunn Museum are shown four frames from Amet’s Battle of Santiago Bay (1898). Amet worked for a time with Thomas Edison as well. Edward Amet standing in his backyard with his set for the filming of The Battle of Santiago Bay, (1898).

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COMPLETE YOUR TOUR OF EDWARD AMET
WATCH this comical production about a serious inventor and pre cinema pioneer here in this Dunn Museum production running 2:40.

1894
GEORGES EMILE JOSEPH DEMENŸ (1850-1917)
Demenÿ stays behind at the Physiological Station in Bois de Boulogne while Marey winters in Naples, and shoots some interesting motion;

🎞️ Baiser Envolé / Kiss Flies Away
🎞️ Clin D’Éventail / Fan Wink
🎞️ Cancan / French for dance in your underwear

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Demenÿ made his camera, the Photophone to film these episodes. Marey dismissed him in 1894 likely over these kinds of moving pictures that Demenÿ imagined the population would want to see. This had apparently been the straw that broke the camels back between the two men.

The Demenÿ Photophone should not be confused with the Bell/Tainter Photophone of 1880.

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Enter Charles Chase, an inventor and showman active in the 1890s, known for developing the Stereopticon Cyclorama, also referred to as the Electric Cyclorama.

This was a panoramic projection system that used a combination of slides, lights, and mechanical effects to create immersive, moving panoramic displays, a step beyond traditional static Cycloramas.

It was described in sources like La Nature (1896) as a novel entertainment form, though it struggled to compete with the emerging popularity of cinema.

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The Electric Cyclorama was showcased at events like the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago (1893), where it was part of the era’s fascination with large-scale, immersive spectacles.

Unlike traditional Cycloramas, which were massive 360-degree paintings (e.g., the Chicago Fire Cyclorama or Kilauea Cyclorama), Chase’s system incorporated electric lighting and projected images to enhance realism, often with effects like moving scenes or pyrotechnics.

This aligned with the technological advancements highlighted at the Exposition, where electricity was a major draw.

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projected pictures of motion had already been seen around the world by 1895, but there was something amazing about these enormous widescreen picture shows that drew crowds in abundance

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American Charles Chase designed and patented his Electric Cyclorama and demonstrated it in 1893.

The British Journal of Photography had this to say about a second version of the show in 1895;

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Brian Coe states Chase’s 1895 Electric Cyclorama used eight pairs of Magic Lanterns to project a ninety-metre-long circular screen with panoramic dissolving images.

Like a chandelier, the lanterns and their operator were suspended from the ceiling.

^{Images Ben Katchor}

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From Hopkins book Magic Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, Including Trick Photography we read about Chase’s 1895 Electric Cyclorama across four pages (358-361).

N.B. Hopkins incorrectly uses the name Close.

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A specific reference to Chase’s work comes from Photographic Times in 1896 which noted that Panoramas, including Chase’s Electric Cyclorama, were losing ground to other entertainment forms like circuses or skating rinks, despite their artistic and technical ingenuity.

Charles A. Chase’s Electric Cyclorama was significant as an early experiment in combining electricity and projection for entertainment, a precursor to modern cinema, not so far away.

AUTOUR D’UNE CABIN (1894)
Émile Reynaud presents live from Musée Grévin in Paris this early, little summer at the beach film played on his Théâtre Optique.

Created 1893 and shown December 1894 (636 images, 147 feet of film). Runs 1:52

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The use of multiple projected images around a cylindrical screen anticipates later multi-projector panoramas, and eventually, circular and dome-based cinematic experiences. Of the Barber Electrorama I have not been able to find any images, or of Barber himself except a printed diagram seen coming up.

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The Barber Electrorama audience was encircled by a 40-foot high and 400-foot diametre cylindrical screen. On the top of a barbican, ten outwardly organized lanterns were mounted, generating a continuous Panorama from slides measuring only 7 ¼ × 6 ½ inches.

As we learn from the patent, the projection system had ten lanterns arranged radially on a central tower projecting images from 6¼″ × 6½″ glass slides. The source was a central lime cylinder illuminated by ten oxy‑hydrogen jets.

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the Electrorama appears to have had limited success, appearing at the Niagara venue in Westminster for only 14 days

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A single lime cylinder lit by ten oxy-hydrogen jets served as the light source for all ten lanterns. From the Optical Magic Lantern Journal July issue of 1898 we see the central device itself with accompanying legend from p103.

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No images of any kind have been found on the Thomas W. Barber Electrorama, or of Barber himself excepting this circular diagram from the Optical Magic Lantern Journal from June 1898. The article promotes the Electrorama without naming it.

It appears to have had limited success, appearing at the Niagara venue in Westminster for only fourteen days. Here are pages 103 and 104 in their entirety.

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He made that claim in the 1920 Who’s Who. Rudolph Hunter also said he had a demonstration set for Atlantic City but gave no date. No show-date or details are known, or of his projector.

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like a good alchemist, Hunter claimed to have perfected transmutation and could turn silver into gold

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Left: based on a c. 1925 photograph, this oil-on-canvas portrait of Rudolph M. Hunter was painted by Emilie DeSilver Atlee in 1976 and is now in the collection of the Franklin Institute.

Right: studio photograph of Hunter, by Elizabeth Atlee Carapico, c.1890s.

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Hunter gave no name to his alleged projector.

Like a good alchemist, Hunter claimed to have perfected transmutation and could turn silver into gold. He invested heavily, to no end.

Pictured is the cover of an 1880 book advertising Hunter’s services as a patent attorney.

READ Martin Quigley, Jr.’s Magic Shadows- The Story of the Origin of Motion Pictures Quigley Publishing, New York, 1960, digitised into an eBook at Project Gutenberg.

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The footage was copyrighted by Dickson and cameraman William Heise as a photograph with the Library of Congress in January (it was actually a proof sheet containing forty-five images, shown below).

I enlarged the written section to make it readable.

Ott later jokingly identified himself as the world’s first “film star.”

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these four seconds are known the
world over as Fred Ott’s Sneeze

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The film footage originally was five seconds long and was photographed at 16 fps on 35mm film stock. The frames you see here are twenty-one in all and have been re-constructed at 12 fps for a 2.52-second animation as it would have been seen in the Kinetoscope.

Dickson and Heise filmed Ott in the Black Maria.

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1894
WILLIAM K. L. DICKSON EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
William Heise and Dickson photographed three films:

🎞️       Buffalo Dance  :22 seconds
🎞️       Band Drill  :27 seconds
🎞️       Bucking Bronco  :29 seconds

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Robert Paul re-produced the Edison Kinetoscope as well as a camera for shooting the film needed, and because the Paul machine was not a licensed Kinetoscope, Edison did not provide the standard film required so Paul manufactured his own.

In the manufacturing of his own film, Paul developed what he called a Rotary Perforator which we can read about in Frederick A. Talbot’s Moving Pictures – How They Are Made and Worked, (William Heinemann, London, 1912) on p60 below.

Robert Paul’s Rotary Perforator seen here in a reproduced photograph, on page 60 from Frederick A. Talbot’s book 1912.

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Robert William Paul’s Rotary Film Perforator from 1896 showing the left and right sides. Photographs Stéphane Dabrowski, la Cinémathèque Française.

Also seen is the Robert Paul film developing room from Frederick A. Talbot page 70.

^{Photographs Stéphane Dabrowski}

The Joly process was based on the additive colour theory, which posits that all visible colours can be created by mixing red, green, and blue light. Instead of using three separate filters and taking three different exposures, as was common at the time, Joly’s method streamlined the process.

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The Joly Colour Process was not based on du Haurons 1869 method. “The difference between both is that Hauron relied on three separation negatives while Joly exposed a single plate through blue, green, & red filters” ─ Dr. Hanin Hannouch, Curator for Analog & Digital Media [Photo/Audio/Film] at Weltmuseum Wien.

Joly used a glass photo-plate with fine vertical red, green and blue lines less than 0.1 mm wide. The plate (below) acted as a series of very fine filters. They look horizontal but were vertical. Joly created a glass plate with incredibly fine, ruled lines of red, green, and blue-violet dyes.

These lines were ruled with precision machines to ensure they were consistent and non-overlapping. This screen acted as a single, combined filter.

Two Joly Photomicrographs below.

The special filter screen was placed inside a camera in front of a standard black-and-white photographic plate. When a picture was taken, the light from the subject passed through the fine-lined filter.

Each microscopic line of the filter effectively captured the red, green, or blue information of the scene, which was then recorded as a corresponding shade of gray on the black-and-white emulsion.

A filter screen was placed in the camera in front of an orthochromatic plate, so that the light passed through the filter before striking the emulsion.

After exposure, the plate was printed onto another plate to make a positive BW transparency. The exposed plate was developed to create a positive black-and-white transparency.

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The human eye then blended these tiny coloured lights to perceive a full-colour image. A limited-colour transparency, viewed by transmitted light was then made on another plate. However, not being sensitive to the full range of the spectrum, the final colour image could not achieve the look of natural colour.

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This meant the final images often lacked natural colour. This is a Joly process lantern slide that used a three-coloured filter screen made by covering a glass plate with very fine red, green and blue lines. Digitised image from the National Science and Media Museum.

The process was expensive and required the precise alignment of the black-and-white positive with a second, identical filter screen, which was difficult and time-consuming. The filter screens, by their nature, blocked a significant amount of light, which led to very long exposure times and a dense, dark final image that could only be viewed with strong backlighting.

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It laid the groundwork for later, more successful additive colour processes, such as the famous Autochrome Lumière plates, which simplified the process by integrating the colour mosaic filter directly onto the plate itself.

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Pictured here is a write up on the work and life of John Joly in the Irish Independent newspaper in Dublin, shortly after his death. The published date indicates 9 December and the International Press Cutting Bureau clipping logged on 12 December.

LeRoy was a photographic apprentice from age 16 who had seen the work of Henry Heyl who I have reported on in chapter fourteen here.

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Oh, and one last thing which confirms LeRoy was a shyster– Mary, Queen of Scots was filmed and shown in 1895 not 1894. It couldn’t have been one of the films. I’m not disputing an exhibition took place, this is fact. Just that this was not one of the films. But it does give me a reason to show it, below.

It was first available for viewing on 28 August 1895 at Kinetoscope Parlours and Nickelodeons. The Riley’s Magic Lantern optical store exhibition at 16 Beekman Street, New York took place on 5 February 1894.

1894-1897
ALFRED DARLING (1862-1931)
Darling was a Brighton-based mechanical engineer who opened an engineering and repair shop in 1894 and in no time was manufacturing cinematographic equipment for the new film trade. Darling knew many British film pioneers and began to manufacture cinematographic equipment.

He built cameras, projectors and accessories (printers, winders, measurers, tripods, perforators) that were widely used in Britain and exported abroad. Examples of Darling cameras was the Biokam which is in the Science Museum collections.

Along with Alfred Wrench, he took out a patent for a claw-operated cine camera with a variable shutter. He later went on to make 35mm cine cameras.

Darling worked closely with the Warwick Trading Company and Charles Urban who commissioned Darling to make the Urban Bioscope cameras / projectors and later asked him to construct cameras and a perforator for the Lee & Turner colour process (c.1901–1902).

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He’s commonly grouped with the Brighton School circle (George Albert Smith, James Williamson, Esmé Collings), providing the mechanical know-how that allowed those filmmakers to make and exhibit films locally and internationally.

Pictured: Darling Empire camera, 1913. Darling created this camera as an alternative for clients to enter the emerging industry of animated photography.

^{Images the Sam Dodge Collection}

It was the most user-friendly camera, with the goal of producing as error-free a film as possible. Images Sam Dodge Collection. Sources differ slightly on the exact year Darling began selling cameras.

Many accounts say he began producing film equipment around 1896–1897, though he opened his Brighton engineering business in 1894 and by the late 1890s was an established supplier.

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“This camera shot the very first blockbuster movie in the history of filmmaking”

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Pictured: The Urban/Smith/Darling Kinemacolor camera 1905. Sam Dodge; “This camera shot the very first blockbuster movie in the history of filmmaking . . . this movie was shot in late 1911 and released in early 1912.”

However he does not name the film.

^{Images the Sam Dodge Collection}

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Pictured: Kinemacolor camera from 1905 was engineered by Alfred Darling. It has two shutters; a normal blanking shutter; a second shutter with two colour filters. It films at 32 fps, double the normal 16 fps of the period.

^{Images the Sam Dodge Collection}

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Post 1897, along with Charles Urban, Alfred Darling worked on and manufactured a mechanism for the Biokam, a small-gauge camera for amateur use, (advertisement below).

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This amateur-format 17.5 mm film (slit from 35mm) was taken I believe, by the Darling Biokam, developed by engineer Alfred Darling (with Alfred Wrench) for the Warwick Trading Company/Charles Urban enterprise.

The Biokam system was explicitly designed for 17.5 mm film (half the width of standard 35mm) for amateur and semi-professional use.

_{Animation Tangible Media}

It was described as a combined motion picture camera, stills-camera, film printer and projector, in the late 1890s. The mechanism was built in Brighton by Alfred Darling’s workshop. The vendor or distributor was the Warwick Trading Company.

The date c.1899-1900 is most often given for the Biokam’s commercial launch.

Who is the man in the chair?  No known record or catalogue entry I can find gives a personal name for this particular man. If it was Alfred Darling, I think at least one documentation would say. Notice where the perforations are.

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1894
BOLESLAS MATUSZEWSKI (1856-1944)
During this year Matuszewski self-published a booklet endorsing the wonders of photography and in a special way, cinematography. He expounded on the need to create “cinematographic deposits,” in all fields of life. He sent his booklet to kings, queens, military men, ministers of both government and the church, newspapers, doctors and scientists.

A few months later he self published another booklet and did the same all over again. The booklet was called La photographie animé and by the time the 2^nd book went out, favourable comments began to pour in from newspapers across Europe. Matuszewski was certainly cinematography’s greatest ambassador.

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Boleslaw Matuszewski was a Polish photographer of some repute. Little is known about him, and his publications provide minimal biographical information as short as they are. From page nine of Une nouvelle source de l’histoire (Creation d’un dépot de cinematographie historique) we read of his passion for this new art form;

“The cinematograph may not give the complete story, but at least what it delivers is indisputable and of absolute truth. Ordinary photography allows graphic retouching, which can go as far as transformation. But go and retouch, in an identical way for each figure, these thousand or twelve hundred almost microscopic shots…! We can say that animated photography has a character of authenticity, exactitude, precision which belongs only to it.”  

Une nouvelle source de l’histoire was reprinted in 1898.

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_{Image Museum of Cinematography in Lodz}

He predicted and desired an institution where all cinematography taken could be stored and preserved. Pictured is a poster for the film Bolesław Matuszewski: Unknown pioneer of cinematography by Jerzy Bezkowski.

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From his writing, it appears that Matuszewski was a definite fan of cinematography as a tool for culture, documentation, and education. He was clearly not interested in cinema for amusement purposes.

He never mentioned Lumiere’s name in his books and although he used the name cinematograph, he stated that he always favoured the term “animated photography.”

He quoted E. J. Marey several times, and in return Marey spoke of Matuszewski in a lecture he gave at Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in 1898.

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Marey spoke at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers about this devotee of motion pictures and its extensive social possibilities;

1894
THE PHANTOSCOPE
CHARLES FRANCIS JENKINS (1867-1934)
Along with Thomas Armat, Jenkins and Armat will soon produce an early motion picture projector with reeled film and electric light, he calls the Phantoscope. One of Jenkins/Armat Phantoscope projectors below.

^{Phantoscope image Peter Domankiewicz}

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While communicating with Peter in 2023, he elaborated on the work of Jenkins and Armat happening after 1894;

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The Phantoscope was the work of John A. R. Rudge in 1889 and improved upon by Jenkins with roll film and electricity. An inventor by choice, Jenkins was also working on his Vitascope pictured below, which had its debut in 1896.

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“Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat together invented one of the most effective motion picture projectors of their day, and gave commercial public film screenings in September 1895”

^{– the late Stephen Herbert}

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Here are three pages on the Jenkins Phantoscope from Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-Production and Practical Working, Henry Vaux Hopwood, Optician and Photographic Trades Review, London, 1899, pp86, 87, 88.

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The continued story on the Jenkins Phantoscope transformation to Vitascope from a contemporary perspective, in Living Pictures: Their History, Photo-Production and Practical Working, Henry Vaux Hopwood, 1899, pp107, 108, 109.

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In striking similarity to that of the Muybridge/Stanford wager, Jenkins took a bet that five gaited horses could have all four feet (twenty hooves) in the air at the same time.

The answer, according to sources present, was to the affirmative.

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The film was documented as being shown in an upstairs apartment over a local jewellery store on 6 June 1894, in downtown Richmond Indiana.

Pictured is the Armat Phantoscope projector of 1895 from Stephen Herbert, The Optilogue.

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Bottom Left- The Phantoscope camera-projector, with four revolving lenses. Sequence shown is from Stephen Herbert, The Optilogue.

Right- The front cover of Scientific American magazine, from 31 October, 1896 showing the Phantoscope camera-projector and fifteen shot-put images.

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the film was documented as being shown in an upstairs apartment over a local jewellery store

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The research of Deac Rossell shows us the activity of Jenkins as it pertains to the Phantoscope in 1893.

In 1916 Charles Francis Jenkins will start the Society of Motion Picture Engineers.

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As early as 1996 and revised in 2015, Stephen Herbert told us;

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Author and biographer Homer Croy supplied an account narrating a showing of the photographs in Jenkins’ brother’s jewellery store in Richmond, Indiana, 6 June 1894 with numerous specifics, and a brand-new date of extreme relevance, bearing on the priority as between screen inventors.

Croy wrote;

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Here is the Homer Croy account of the Jenkins supposed demonstration of the Phantoscope (O not A) in 1894 taken from Terry Ramsayes A Million and One Nights / A History of The Motion Picture Through 1925 (Ramsaye, T., Simon and Schuster, New York, 1926) on pp203 & 204.

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Thomas Armat questioned if the event had taken place. Records if any, which may have been housed at the Richmond Telegram newspaper building, had gone up in smoke due to a fire following the 6 June 1894 alleged showing.

Annabelle-the-Dancer who’s real name was Mrs. E. J. Buchan of Chicago, was located and asked about the 6 June event. Her response by letter is recorded in Ramsaye’s A Million and One Nights on p206;

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the plot thickens on 17 March 1896 however, when Jenkins reports his Phantoscope had been “taken” from his Washington D.C. home

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Henry Hopwood states on p87 of Living Pictures that the Phantoscope was a combination camera-projector and that it was first exhibited in 1895 and first described a year later.

This would then deny the 6 June 1894 Indiana demonstration.

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The Phantoscope however, was patent-filed in November 1894 according to Hopwood (patent Nº 536569). An illustration of the Phantoscope from the patent also found on p88 of Hopwood’s Living Pictures below.

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The Phantoscope showed up at the Atlanta International Exposition, and the Franklin Institute in 1896. The plot thickens on 17 March 1896 however, when Jenkins reports his Phantoscope had been “taken” from his Washington D.C. home.

The Edison Vitascope later, looks mysteriously similar.

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The impropriety taking place during these years of discovery and invention was ruthless. These were cut throat times as evidenced in a variety of patent suits, fights, newspaper reports and even death.

Interestingly, Brian Coe in The History of Movie Photography 1981 p67 calls the device of Jenkins a Phant “a” scope.

Hopwood calls it a Phant “o” scope. Henry Hopwood was a contemporary of Jenkins and was correct—the device is spelled with an “o.”

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In closing this portion of the Charles Francis Jenkins mystery in pre cinema history that abuts the post cinema era, I offer this thankful letter from Alexander Graham Bell to Jenkins.

^{Image the Library of Congress}

1894-1895
THE ORIGINAL MUTOSCOPE
The first Mutoscope by Hermann Casler wasn’t the heavy metal Nickelodeon peepshow that stood on four legs in the arcades and was as tall as a ten-year-old boy. It was a little more compact than that.

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The Mutoscope was designed by Casler with Harry Norton Marvin, Elias Bernard Koopman, and W. K. L. Dickson who because he was still with Edison, played a minor and unassuming role with no name recognition. A silent partner, before joining the AMBC team.

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Inside the box, the crank ‘d’ turned a worm gear ‘d’, that spun the picture cards, whereas a wire stub ‘k’ held each card back so that it could be displayed to the viewing port on top. The stub was moved by another worm gear on an identical shaft operating on the wheel ‘t.’

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The corresponding twin British patent was No 423. Casler’s opening statement began;

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In his own words, Casler describes the nine working figures in his patent;

“It is constructed as follows, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, in which…”

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The Mutoscope’s individual image frames were traditional silver-based black-and-white photographic prints on durable, flexible opaque cards. Each frame of the original Mutograph’s 70mm film is contact printed to create the image on each card.

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The cards were fastened to a circular core wheel, which resembled a giant Rolodex, rather than being bound into a booklet like a Flip Book. Typically, a reel might hold 800+ cards, allowing for an approximate one-minute of viewing time.

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Mutoscopes were Nickelodeon-parlour coin-operated motion picture devices designed for a single viewer at a time. They changed somewhat over the years to metal (pictured), and faded away by the 1920s due to things like; screen projection allowed many viewers making the Mutoscope and Kinetoscope obsolete; coinage changed in size sometimes not fitting in the slot; pornography.

Eugène Trutat, in his General Treaty of Projections published in 1897, believed that “their manufacture (referring to the machines of Lumière and Demenÿ) leaves much to be desired, making only exception for that of the Pipon brothers, who, on the contrary, is established with all the desirable care and gives excellent results.”

The Science Museum Group spells the machine with an e, Cinegraphoscope. Most of my information is from the work of David Fischer at Brighton History. He seems to be the only historian I found who knows anything about the Pipon brothers Cinographoscope because not all wonders from the past, are buried.

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A CANADIAN APPEARANCE
Within sixty days of leaving the Imperial Hotel in September 1896 we see the Pipon Cinographoscope travelling the world just like the Cinématographe. On 19 December it was showcasing itself in Hamilton Ontario Canada at the Palace Rink on Jackson Street West continuously from 2 until 10 p.m. according to the Hamilton Spectator Archives.

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The Pipons were however, quite prolific with other family members joining in, such as another younger brother Emile Alfred Jean Pipon (1872-1927), patenting a variety of gadgets in all works of optics, mechanics, ebenistery and mostly all work concerning photography.

Some of these patents included; “a cinematographe more particularly intended for advertising” (1907) and “an inverting device for cinematographic projections” (1908).

1894
JAMES HENRY WHITE (1872–1944)
Nova Scotia born White had little if anything to contribute to pre cinema. However, approaching its arrival, he became very active. White directed, produced, was Cinematographer and acted in silent films.

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Working at Edison’s Boston Kinetoscope operation in 1894, White directed 500+ films. While working for the Holland Brothers, partners Norman Raff and Frank Gammon, White joined Edison as a Vitascope producer and projectionist.

Here is Fatima’s Hoochee Coochee Dance from 1896.

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In 1896 Edison ended his partnership with Raff and Gammon, but White remained as director of the Kinetograph section. Leaving on a tour with cameraman W. Bleckyrden to photograph the Orient, he and William Heise made Vitascope films. Here is Watermelon Eating from 1896.

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In France in 1900 White filmed the Paris Exposition. While recording the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo in September 1901, President William McKinley was assassinated by Leon Czolgosz. Panorama of the Paris Exposition, from the Seine in 1900.

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In 1902 White retired from filmmaking. He moved to London to head Edison’s Film and Phonograph operations. He became managing director of the National Phonograph Company in 1904. Here is Scene on Surf Avenue, Coney Island from 1896.

1894-1896
THE KINETOGRAPHE
EVGENY ANTONOVICH WERNER (1861-1908)
Prior to dabbling in early cinema, along with brother Michel, Evgeny instituted Werner Frères et Cie and began selling Edison Phonographs. Upon seeing a Kinetoscope, they began constructing their own Kinetographe.

In October 1894, they opened the first French Kinetoscope parlor at 20 Boulevard Poissonnière, showcasing films such as Annabelle Dance, The Cockfight, A Bar Room Scene, Blacksmith’s Shop, and The Barbershop. These were likely Edison-produced films, as the Werners initially relied on his ecosystem.

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Evgeny patented his Kinetographe (pictured) 18 June 1895 having replaced Dickson’s disk shutter with a cylindrical shutter. French patent № 248254 was for “a new type of apparatus for viewing a series of photographs reproduced on an endless film, animated with a continuous movement.”

To focus on the Kinetoscope, the brothers dissolved Werner Frères et Cie in October 1894. Michel, along with their father Alexis Werner and a financier named Adrienne Charbonnel, formed a new company, Le Kinetoscope Edison, Michel et Alexis Werner, dedicated to exploiting the Kinetoscope in France.

Evgeny was notably excluded from this new venture, suggesting a possible rift or strategic divergence between the brothers. Later, Michel partnered with banker Henry Iselin to create another company, M. Werner et Cie (19 January, 1895), to exhibit and sell Kinetoscopes across France, though the limited scope (only ten devices) hints at a cautious or constrained approach.

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This clipping is from an unknown source. The patent, as described in sources, was for a modified version of Edison’s Kinetoscope, featuring a cylindrical shutter instead of the disk shutter used in the original design. This modification suggests an attempt to improve or differentiate the device while staying close to Edison’s framework.

BTW, it was through the Werner operation that Antoine Lumiere saw the Kinetoscope and had his boys build something of their own called the Cinématographe after taking the name from Leon Bouly’s failed patent. Being as bold as they could be, the Werners began to also exploit the Edison Kinetophone.

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Demenÿ used Étienne Jules Marey’s Chronophotograph Camera, pictured here in a closed (image the Science Museum Group) and open top view (image The College de France). If and how the images were ever strung together to be seen, is unknown.

Arnauld images courtesy of Bibliothèque Henri Piéron, Paris Descartes University.

HONOURABLE MENTION
LATE 19^TH CENTURY
THE KINEBLEPOSCOPE
An early, very obscure and short-lived optical toy for viewing a sequence of images to create the illusion of motion. This device belongs to the family of early animation / pre cinema instruments that were popular in the 19th century.

It worked by rapidly moving images past a small viewing aperture, relying on Apparent Motion to blend them into a continuous moving picture. It was a handheld or peephole device using a blinking shutter mechanism, possibly a flapping card or mechanical flap to intermittently expose sequential images on a strip or drum.

This mimicked early film editing techniques, allowing users to blink through animations like walking figures or jumping animals. It was part of the wave of post Zoetrope inventions (around 1880–1895) that experimented with shutter speeds for smoother motion. Like many such toys, it was used for parlour entertainment and science education but faded with projected cinema.

Documentation is sparse, possibly due to it being a short-lived patent or trade name, but it fits the era’s fascination with optical persistence experiments. The name is a combination of Greek roots: kine (motion) and blepō (to see, eyelid or blink).

No name or date is associated with The Kinebleposcope that I can find.

1894
JULES RICHARD (1862-1956)
Richard was a French mathematician born in Blet, Cher, France. Richard taught mathematics at lycées in Tours, Dijon, and Châteauroux. He earned his doctorate at age 39 from the Faculty of Sciences in Paris in 1901, with a 126-page thesis on the surface of Fresnel waves.

The little-known Verascope by Richard was an all-metal stereo camera which remained in production up until the mid-1920s far surpassing all other cameras produced from this period. Because of this, many Verascopes survive.

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There is a potential for confusion with other individuals named Jules Richard, such as Jules Richard (1863–1945), an oceanographer, or Jules Richard (1825–1899), a journalist. Scottish Explorer William Bruce used Richard’s Verascope on his expeditions between 1899 and 1914.

Richard’s camera took simultaneous double images on twelve pre-loaded glass plates.

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Image on the right below of Richard’s camera from 1894. Courtesy Dr. David Munro, The Royal Scottish Geographical Society, The University of Strathclyde, and Alan Dawson, Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

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Miss Jerry was Black’s first lantern Picture Play presented 9 October and were posed photographs on glass. They were projected with dissolving views by a Biunial Sciopticon Lantern at a documented rate of 4 per minute with host-narration.

They gained the nic name ‘slow movies.’

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As alexanderblack.com tells us;

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Princeton University Library houses the largest known collection of Alexander Black lantern slides at 144, from his three complete picture plays. Beaumont Newhall in his History of Photography (1964), pp113-114 states;

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Miss Jerry premiered at the Carbon Studio of Arts on West 16th Street, New York city lasting as long as todays movie—two hours.

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Following Miss Jerry’s run, Black took his three complete Picture Plays on tour. Here is a biunial twin-lens Magic Lantern (with Eclipse Slide Carriers loaded in each), and slides from Miss Jerry.

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Rather than for his visual “illusion of motion,”  role in pre cinema, Black is remembered more for his contribution of the screen narrative. However, Paramount President Adolph Zukor did affirm Black as an “author, scenario writer, titler, director, cameraman, and exhibitor” in a 1919 letter he wrote to Black “a quarter of a century” later.

Much thanks to Jason Sanders, Film Research Specialist/Film Notes Writer, BAMPFA Film Library and Study Center, UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive for digging the letter out of the vault for us.

Eugène Trutat, in his General Treaty of Projections published in 1897, believed that “their manufacture (referring to the machines of Lumière and Demenÿ) leaves much to be desired, making only exception for that of the Pipon brothers, who, on the contrary, is established with all the desirable care and gives excellent results.”

The Science Museum Group spells the machine with an e, Cinegraphoscope.

Most of my information is from the work of David Fischer at Brighton History. He seems to be the only historian I found who knows anything about the Pipon brothers Cinographoscope.

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A CANADIAN APPEARANCE
Within sixty days of leaving the Imperial Hotel in September 1896 we see the Pipon Cinographoscope travelling the world just like the Cinématographe. On 19 December it was showcasing itself in Hamilton Ontario Canada at the Palace Rink on Jackson Street West, continuously from 2 until 10 p.m. according to the Hamilton Spectator Archives.

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The Pipons were however, quite prolific with other family members joining in, such as another younger brother Emile Alfred Jean Pipon (1872-1927), patenting a variety of gadgets in all works of optics, mechanics, ebenistery and mostly all work concerning photography.

Some of these patents included; “a cinematographe more particularly intended for advertising” (1907) and “an inverting device for cinematographic projections” (1908).

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Intrigued with living pictures after visiting an exhibition of Ottomar Anschütz’s Chronophotography, Prószyński became a cinematographer, director and inventor who at the age of 19 built the Pleograph which could register up to 50 frames per second.

Kazimierz never patented the Pleograph and no images have I found.

_{Reproduced photograph Piotr Mecik Forum}

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Prószyński developed a leaf shutter called the Obturator, a three-bladed shutter that breaks the stream of projected light 40 times per second, allowing projection of films without flicker. The French Academy of Sciences offers their highest praise.

Gaumont obtains rights and implements the Obturator immediately.

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In 1898 Prószyński re-invents the Pleograph minus the flicker using his Obturator and calls it the Biopleograph, replacing the single lens of the Pleograph with two lenses, and photographing onto two camera rolls.

During the projection, two lenses cast light on the screen alternately.

_{Image EverPresent}

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In 2007, Janusz Król at the National Centre for Film Culture reconstructed the Biopleograph into a full-functional device using some Prószyński notes and only two photographs of the original apparatus known.

_{Images Muzeum Historii Polski}

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FYI
The Muzeum Historii Polski states that it is rumoured that Louis Lumière at the Grand Café on the evening of 28 December 1895 said “Gentlemen, this man Prószyński is the first in cinema, I am the second.” This is an interesting quote if true.

We do know that Louis did not think cinema was anything important and had no future. Therefore giving up such an honour would be easy to do. The brothers were more interested in their Autochrome process than the moving picture.

I have not seen this quote anywhere else in over 35 years of research.

_{These images are in the public domain}

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A newspaper man for the Kurier Warszawski reported in 1898 while covering the Museum of Industry and Agriculture initial screening of the Biopleograph in Warsaw that;

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Four frames exist from Rink in Saxon Garden filmed by Prószyński using the Biopleograph sometime between 1894 and 1896 and then first shown in 1902.

The four frames are taken from Władysław Jewsiewicki’s biography Kazimierz Prószyński, published by Wydawnictwo Interpress, Warsaw, 1974. Animation reproduced from those frames by the Polish press.

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When the Warsaw Uprising began in 1944, Prószyński along with his wife and daughter are arrested on 22 August and then separated by the Nazis. Kazimierz is taken to Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp and murdered.

_{Photograph Czesław Białczyński}

In the photograph, Mrs. Prószyński and the daughter are not identified. However, my understanding is that they both lived out the war and the girl married. It’s believed that Kazimierz Prószyński has two grand children living in the US.

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From the Scientific American Supplement article accompanying the chronophotographs, the writer offered this conclusion from the feline’s face; Did the writer therefore see the projection or just the cat falling?

“The expression of offended dignity shown by the cat at the end of the first series indicates a want of interest in scientific investigation”

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We know the Fusil Photographique was used by the fact that when the cat is dropped, it is followed downward or panned, until it lands, which is the reason for this physiological imagery.

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The Molteni Lanterns below were painted sheet metal lanterns on four varnished copper legs with a varnished wood base.

They had a porthole door on each side, a brass fireplace, long-dimension optical tube with two-wheel and rack-and-pinion lens and a spring-loaded sight glass.

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1892
In 1892 Alfred Molteni manufactured a table viewer called a Lanternoscope to examine lantern slides prior to projection. The Molteni Lanternoscope pictured below with one illustration.

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Molteni was a renowned lanternist and the official projectionist of great scientists such as Jules Janssen, and Etienne-Jules Marey.

Alfred’s great grandfather made Étienne-Gaspard Robert’s Phantasmagoria Fantascope.

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TOP
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Welcome	About	Introduction	Chapter One beginning of time – 999 AD
Chapter Two 1000 AD – 1399	Chapter Three 1400 – 1599	Chapter Four 1600 – 1649	Chapter Five 1650 – 1699
Chapter Six 1700 – 1749	Chapter Seven 1750 – 1799	Chapter Eight 1800 – 1819	Chapter Nine 1820 – 1829
Chapter Ten 1830 – 1839	Chapter Eleven 1840 – 1849	Chapter Twelve 1850 – 1859	Chapter Thirteen 1860 – 1869
Chapter Fourteen 1870 – 1879	Chapter Fifteen 1880 – 1884	Chapter Sixteen 1885 – 1889	Chapter Seventeen 1890 – 1894
Chapter Eighteen 1895 – 1899	Chapter Nineteen 1900 + post cinema	Chapter Twenty 1911 +	Copyright
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