Kinetoscope Arcade

Kinetoscope Arcade, vintage 8 x 10 inch glossy silver print double-weight fiber photograph. Image circa 1899, San Francisco, CA. Credited to the Museum of Modern Art Film Library.

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, by creating the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. A process using roll film first described in a patent application submitted in France and the U.S. by French inventor Louis Le Prince, the concept was copied by U.S. inventor Thomas Edison in 1889, and subsequently developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. Dickson and his team at the Edison lab also devised the Kinetograph, an innovative motion picture camera with rapid intermittent, or stop-and-go, film movement, to photograph movies for in-house experiments and, eventually, commercial Kinetoscope presentations.

Printed in the second half of the 20th century as part of the American Heritage Publishing Archive. 

Verso bears original filing notations and credit stamping. In very good condition.

Provenance: From the American Heritage Publishing Archives.