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25/3/1895: Armat and Jenkins
On the 25th March 1895, two young inventors entered into a formal agreement to work together to develop a motion picture device. The pair were Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat.
Having grown up near Richmond in Indiana, Jenkins was working as a civil service stenographer in Washington DC, and had already enjoyed some success in the field of motion pictures. Apparently, in the summer of 1894, he had amazed a small group of friends by projecting tiny moving images onto a silk handkerchief and, on the 24th November 1894, had filed a patent (No 536,569) for a Kinetoscope-like device for viewing motion pictures, which he called a ‘Phantascope', which was issued on the 26th March 1895. The machine was actually a variation of the device invented by J.A.A. Rudge in 1887. Armat, a native of Washington, had become interested in film projection after seeing a demonstration of Otto Anschutz’s Tachyscope at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. In October 1894, Armat enrolled at the Bliss School of Electricity, which was where he and Jenkins met.
It was a symbiotic relationship: Armat needed films for his projection experiments, which Jenkins’ cameras could provide, while Jenkins needed Armat’s money to finance his experiments. Together, they set about adapting the Phantascope into a projector, using a ‘beater’ mechanism similar to that patented by Georges Demeny in 1893 to move the film. Within six months, their endeavours were successful: after a private screening in Armat’s real estate office in the summer, they projected Kinetoscope films to a paying (25c) audience in two small rooms at the Cotton States Exposition in Atlanta in late September 1895.
Sadly, the pair’s success was to lead to the dissolution of their partnership. In mid-October, Jenkins returned to Richmond, Indiana, with one of the Phantascopes, and filed a patent as the sole inventor. Jenkins’ attempt was foiled however, when the patent was ruled to be ‘in interference’ with the joint patent previously taken out.
On the 18th December 1895, Jenkins demonstrated the projector at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, and received a medal for progress in the field. Naturally, Armat kicked up a stink, and the development of the Phantascope was eventually recognised as a joint effort. By now, there was no love lost between the former friends; in fact, in an attempt to discredit Armat, Jenkins would later falsely claim to have successfully projected a film at Richmond on the 6th June 1894 – more than a year before the actual demonstration took place.
Meanwhile, as Jenkins showed off ‘his’ invention to the appreciative audience in Philadelphia, Armat was entering into negotiations with Raff and Gammon, marketers of Edison’s Kinetoscope. Raff and Gammon’s representative, Frank Harrison, had seen the Phantascope at work at the Cotton States Exposition, and had sung its praises to his bosses. They, in turn, were keen to revitalise Edison’s Kinetoscope business, which, now that their novelty had worn off with the public, had slumped dramatically. [ADD]
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