History of the Kinetograph, Kinetoscope and Kinetophonograph

Cinema buffs will treasure this one-of-a-kind facsimile edition of the first published history of film, reproduced from W.K.L. Dickson’s own annotated copy of his ground-breaking 1895 volume. Dickson, co-author with his sister Antonia of this book and of The Life and Inventions of Thomas Alva Edison (1894), headed the team at Edison’s New Jersey laboratory that was attempting to build “an instrument which does for the Eye what the phonograph does for the Ear. “The results of their efforts were the kinetograph (the camera used for photographing motion pictures) and the kinetoscope (the means for viewing them). Acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 1940, Dickson’s book is a unique document that allows the reader to experience the wonder and promise of the cinema in its infancy.