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20/5/1891 - A Peep into the Future
By May of 1891, WKL Dickson, Thomas Edison’s talented assistant, had finally produced a working prototype of the device that would be known as the Kinetoscope. Aided by his new assistant, William Heise, Dickson had finally abandoned the cylinder device on which he had been working late in 1890, after succeeding in filming the short motion picture “Monkeyshines”. In the movie, Sacco Albanese, an Edison laboratory worker, dressed up and fooled around for the camera for a $1. 50 bonus. While Dickson had succeeded in capturing moving pictures on film, the results were far from satisfactory. The film required huge monocular magnification to be viewed adequately, and even then the images were grainy. The film still exists today, and is the only surviving film from the cylinder kinetoscope.
Having abandoned the cylinder, Dickson and Heise turned their attention to developing a machine that used 18cm-wide roll film in a horizontal-feed mechanism, and which was based largely upon the Zoetrope, an early form of projector invented by William George Horner in 1834. The camera was motor-driven and used a unique synchronised shutter and sprocket system devised by Dickson to move the film through the camera. Dickson created the sprocket holes by punching small perforations along the bottom edge of George Eastman’s celluloid film. The sprocket system would pause the film roll before the camera’s shutter just long enough for an image to be captured before moving the film on. Dickson was undoubtedly aided in his efforts by Heise’s experience with one of Edison’s other inventions: the stock market telegraph, through which moving paper tape was fed.
The first demonstration of the prototype Kinetoscope was given by Edison himself at his laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, to a convention of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs on 20th May 1891. The lucky ladies were treated to projections including “the picture of a man. It was a most marvellous picture. It bowed and smiled and waved its hands and took off its hat with the most perfect naturalness and grace. Every motion was perfect.” The man in the film was Dickson, and it can be viewed here. Other films included a boxing scene, a view of a juggler, and a view of a man smoking a pipe.
The following month, while Edison’s lawyers were preparing applications for the Kinetoscope (viewer) and Kinetograph (camera), Dickson was refining the prototype. He slit Eastman’s 70mm celluloid film in half, and spliced the two halves together to obtain a 50ft length of film. Dickson then perforated both edges of the film to ensure its smooth progress on the Kinetoscope’s toothed sprocket wheels. At Edison’s behest, Eastman agreed to manufacture the film to these specifications, thus setting in place the 35mm motion picture film standards that – with some slight modifications - still exist today. Dickson also redesigned the Kinetograph so that the film was carried vertically through the camera, producing frames of 1” x ¾”.
The final product was a bulky, floor-standing “peep-show” cabinet intended for individual viewing. Peering into the peephole, the viewer would see a continuous series of images as the endless 50ft loop of film was rotated in front of a shutter and incandescent lamplight.
The applications for the patents for both the Kinetoscope and the Kinetograph were finally submitted to the US Patent Office on 24th August 1891. Edison, however, believing the invention was little more than an insignificant toy that would have only a temporary popularity, neglected to apply for patents outside of the States – an oversight he would surely come to regret. [ADD]
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