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. First described in conceptual terms by U.S. inventor
Thomas Edison in 1888, it was largely 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.