Motion pictures really got their start in the late 19th century, even though the concept already existed in the zoetrope. Motion pictures on film were developed before the projector or movie theater were widely available, but there were other ways to watch movies. In 1891, Thomas Edison and William Kennedy Laurie Dickson invented a machine called the Kinetoscope, a box that a single person could look into and see light flashing through a series of images on celluloid film. Herman Casler invented the Mutoscope in 1894. The Mutoscope was also an arcade-size box that the viewer peered into, but the viewer turned a crank and controlled the speed, and the images were printed on paper. In other words, it worked like a flipbook.
The Mutoscope was less expensive and did not depend on a power source, so arcades and amusement parks bought them like crazy, spurring Edison to sue the Mutoscope company. Customers didn't care, they flocked to both machines to see a moving picture for the price of a coin, especially the naughty ones. Strangely, while we know the name Kinetoscope, hardly anyone remembers the name Mutoscope, despite the fact that they lasted much longer than Edison's box with the more modern celluloid film. Read about these two machines and their history at Messy Nessy Chic.
(Image credit: United States Farm Security Administration)
